ista's range of services expanded to include e-charging solution
Number of companies using ESG managers grows from 60 to 300 within a year
High participation in corporate volunteering
Essen, 02.07.2025 - ista is helping to decarbonise the building sector: properties with heating cost billing from ista saved an average of 12.33% CO2 in 2023 compared to the base year 2018. The cornerstone of this is the transparency provided by digital, remotely readable meters. By 2024, more than half of the apartments managed by ista — around 2.6 million households — had already been digitized, an increase of four percentage points compared to the previous year.. ista itself is also continuously working towards its goal of being completely net emission-free by 2030: in 2024, the company increased the share of renewable energies in total electricity consumption from 70.5 to 80.3%. Total greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) fell significantly by around 12% from 8,479 to 7,442 tonnes of CO2 equivalents in 2024. The electrification of the fleet also played a significant role in this: a good 72% of the 357-vehicle fleet now has a hybrid or fully electric engine. The entire fleet is to be electrified by 2028.
“We have taken another big step towards our goal of becoming emission-free by 2030, as our 15th progress report shows,” says Hagen Lessing, CEO of ista. “Not only there, but in all our activities, we are paying particular attention to transparency in order to boost the heating transition, whether in the residential sector, commercial properties or public buildings.”
Residential property: focus on energy and resource efficiency
With smart solutions and innovative technologies, ista also laid the foundations for greater energy efficiency in properties in 2024: the HeatPilot service also allows older heating systems to be operated intelligently. HeatPilot has been in use in a logistics centre in Germany for more than two years and to date, an average of 24.5% of heating energy has been saved, adjusted for weather conditions. Currently, the German city of Essen has had ista install HeatPilot in three schools in order to operate the existing heating systems more efficiently.
In 2024, more than 300 companies with over 380,000 properties in Germany were already using ista ESG-Manager, which reduces manual processes through centralised, consistent data management. The number of users has thus grown significantly since the previous year: in 2023, around 60 companies with around 7,000 properties were using ESG-Manager. The integrated solution for the automated provision of heat consumption data covers around 75% of emissions-related information. This structured data management forms the basis for efficient and legally compliant ESG reporting, which fulfils the individual requirements of financial institutions in addition to regulatory requirements. The software will soon also be available in Denmark and Switzerland, as well as in other countries in the future.
Another new service from ista is the so-called resource sluice: for the first time, waste costs incurred in Luxembourg will be distributed fairly among tenants. The sluice is placed above standard residual waste containers in apartment blocks. It can only be opened with the help of a transponder, which is assigned to each flat. Each throw-in is recorded and can therefore be billed per usage unit. Waste costs can thus be reduced by up to 70%.
Broader positioning with e-charging solution
With the acquisition of Chargemaker in the middle of 2024, ista is driving forward its strategy of becoming a full-service provider for climate-friendly property-related services. This is because electromobility is a key lever for reducing CO₂ emissions. Over the past twelve months, Chargemaker’s 3,000 charging points have enabled more than 20 million kilometers of emission-free driving — equivalent to saving over 3,100 tons of CO₂ compared to conventional engines. In the coming years, this number is expected to grow to 25,000 charging points. ista is also active in the area of e-charging infrastructure in France and the United Kingdom.
In the United Kingdom, the company also concluded the first Power Purchase Agreement (PPA), under which the logistics centre of the Farmfoods supermarket chain was equipped with a photovoltaic system consisting of 1,250 modules covering 2,460 square metres.
High level of participation in corporate volunteering
Social aspects of sustainability were once again on the agenda of many ista employees in 2024. In 2024, they performed a total of 4,360 hours of charitable work in various activities and projects. One example is ‘ista in school’: ista employees have been educating kids in schools and daycare centres about energy consumption in buildings and homes for eight years now. In the 2024 reporting year, 44 employees invested over 100 hours of their time in ten facilities in Germany. The programme is now also available in Spain and Poland.
A total of 19,244 new trees were also planted as part of various local initiatives. On Corporate Volunteering Day, which was organised together with the German Red Cross in spring 2025, employees at ista's headquarters in Essen spent a total of 296 hours helping the environment and society.
You can find the full report here: