What ESMT Berlin’s Latest Sustainability Report Says About What Comes Next

The ESMT Berlin campus is like a bridge between old and new. The business school occupies the former State Council building of the German Democratic Republic, one of the most storied addresses in the city, a listed historic property near Berlin’s Museum Island. Built in the 1960s, long before anyone was talking about net zero, the building makes retrofitting for energy efficiency all the more complicated.

And yet, atop the historic building sits Berlin’s largest rooftop solar installation. In 2025, it generated 335,856 kWh of renewable electricity, enough to cover roughly a quarter of ESMT’s electricity needs. On some summer days, it powers the entire campus. A large digital screen displays the system’s real-time energy production for students and visitors.

The rooftop photovoltaic system may be ESMT’s most visible sustainability project, but it is hardly the whole story.

In August, EMST Berlin released its 2025 Sustainability Report, detailing its environmental footprint, campus operations, teaching, research, corporate partnerships and social impact.

The report comes at a time when sustainability reporting requirements have softened even in Europe, and as ESG, DEI and climate initiatives face growing political pressure in the United States.

ESMT keeps publishing anyway, even though it is not required to.

“You do have to know what is really your impact,” says Joanna Radeke, ESMT’s director of sustainability and head of its Institute for Sustainable Transformation.

Business schools teach managers that they cannot manage what they do not measure. Radeke says the same principle should apply to the schools themselves.

“Only then you can reduce the negative side or maximize the positive side.”

‘WE DECIDED TO WALK THE TALK’

ESMT’s 2025 report puts numbers behind its sustainability impact: 338.1 metric tons of CO2-equivalent emissions in 2025, down 3% from 2024 and 49% from 2023. Its market-based Scope 2 emissions have fallen 60% over the last three years. Those are just a few examples.

But, ESMT’s sustainability work started long before the annual reports.

In 2011, the school launched its Sustainable Business Roundtable, bringing companies together to tackle the practical work of putting sustainability into business strategy.

Its Sustainability Task Force brings together 11 employees, students and faculty members to help integrate sustainability into the school’s strategy, while the Institute for Sustainable Transformation coordinates the Climate Governance Initiative Germany with the German Council for Sustainable Development and Board Academy.

Sustainability is embedded through its degree programs, research and executive education, touching everything from corporate reporting and sustainable finance to climate strategy, circular economy, supply chains, geopolitics and the growing tension between artificial intelligence and energy demand.

In EMST Sustainability in Practice projects, MBAs work with companies on six-week consulting challenges where sustainability has to survive the same test as any other business idea: Does it make financial sense? Who will pay for it? What are the tradeoffs? Can it scale? One recent project paired Class of 2026 MBA students with Nespresso to help design a biodiversity index for the coffee industry.

Master in Innovation and Entrepreneurship students can take part in a Sustainability Bootcamp, while Master in Global Management students complete a five-week Social Impact Project with organizations working on social challenges, often in developing economies.

On the research side, it has professorships in both Sustainable Finance, held by Prof. Jörg Rocholl, and Sustainable Accounting, held by Prof. Per Olsson.

In 2022, ESMT began voluntarily compiling detailed sustainability reports, prompted in part by requests from students and corporate clients. If ESMT was telling companies how to measure and report their sustainability performance in a rigorous way, it should be willing to do the same.

“We decided to walk the talk, to do what we tell them to do ourselves,” Radeke tells Poets&Quants.

ESMT Sustainability Report 2025: By The Numbers

ESMT’s sustainability report looks well beyond carbon emissions, tracking the school’s environmental footprint alongside progress on diversity, social impact and its increasingly international campus. Here are some of the numbers that stood out in 2025:

• 1,191 students from 98 nationalities
• 318 employees from 55 nationalities
• Women’s representation among faculty increased 12.7 percentage points during ESMT’s 2022–2025 Gender Equality Plan period.
• Women represented 50% of shortlisted candidates for academic roles in 2025.
• Through Social Impact Projects and Responsible Leader Fellowships, 103 students completed 31 projects with 28 organizations across 19 countries
• Purchased electricity consumption fell 31% to 962,461 kWh in 2025, down from 1.4 million kWh in 2023.
• Water consumption fell 20% to 5,250 cubic meters since 2023 and fell 13% from 2024.
• 338.1 metric tons of CO₂-equivalent emissions in 2025, a 3% reduction from 2024 and a 49% reduction from 2023.
• Scope 2 emissions have fallen 60% over the last three years, a drop the school attributes to renewable electricity procurement, better energy management, and investment in renewable energy generation.

INTERVIEW WITH JOANNA RADEKE

While the 2025 report looks back at ESMT’s progress over the past year, Radeke is just as interested in what comes next.

The sustainability conversation is shifting fast. AI has jumped to the top of corporate agendas even as supply chain resilience has become more urgent. And companies are narrowing their sustainability priorities toward issues they can tie more directly to business performance.

In the interview below, Radeke talks with Poets&Quants about why ESMT continues to publish a sustainability report it is not required to produce, how AI is reshaping the sustainability agenda, and why business schools need to measure their own impact if they expect companies to do the same.

Set the stage for ESMT’s 2025 Sustainability Report. What is the history, and what is the purpose you are trying to accomplish?

Currently business schools do not really have an obligation to report on sustainability at all. We started doing so at the request of our students and some of our larger clients, but also because internally we wanted to have a good overview of what we are doing in terms of sustainability.

We are doing very standard things. We report once a year, like any other company would. We share environmental data — what companies would call ESG — but we also talk about our products, you could say. Education and research are what we do. So we talk about how we embed sustainability in those two aspects, and that is very different from what companies do. Companies can talk about circularity and things like this. We are talking about how we educate people and what outcomes we have from this.

At some point, it looked like we would also be regulated by the European Union. There is this CSRD — Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive — regulation, and that obliged large companies to report on sustainability. Back when this regulation was meant to be introduced, we were also sort of qualifying for it. We ramped up our efforts to set up processes in the right order. We invested in software, and we also looked internally at how we could coordinate sustainability better.

We created the Sustainability Task Force with colleagues representing different departments. That helped us be a bit better in terms of sustainability considerations overall.

But I think what really helped the most is that we have had an initiative with business since 2011 called the Sustainable Business Roundtable. We have these 28 companies that come to us regularly, twice a year, and they learn about sustainability. When I say they learn, they learn from each other. They also learn from key recommendations from academia. We invite experts from NGOs, Greenpeace, and this type of expert as well.

Quite a lot of learning is really from these large companies, and through this process we have also learned a lot. What actually constitutes sustainability management implementation? What are the best practices? We were able to be pushed by the companies to also do something.

At the very beginning, in 2011, we had not been doing that much or reporting at all. With time, we also decided to walk the talk — to do what we tell them to do ourselves.

How has the sustainability landscape changed in Europe? With regulations easing and AI taking up more of the corporate agenda, does Europe still feel like a sustainability leader?

We had our last Sustainable Business Roundtable with companies in June, so not that long ago, and there were more than 30 companies present.

It is a lot of different companies, and it’s not just the chief sustainability officer. We have chief strategy officers, CFOs, as well as quite a lot of people from sustainability. Both in preparation and during the discussions, we can learn quite a lot about what is really driving them at the moment.

I have to say, regulation has been reduced in Europe as well. AI is the No. 1 topic on the agenda. We see it in executive education for sure, so there is a lot of demand for AI programs. But at the same time, all of these companies that are present are already quite far on the sustainability journey. It doesn’t mean that suddenly they do nothing. But they do reduce or try to focus on the key topics relevant to business.

It has gone a little bit down in terms of the number of topics they have on the agenda across different types of companies. There are also interesting discussions about the U.S., Europe and China. China is progressing so fast when it comes to different sustainability considerations that there is also a feeling that they are viewed better than some of the European companies.

With the U.S. focus, we have also had discussions about, for example, diversity. Is this now or still a topic on the agenda? Are they talking about this in the U.S.? There are very different strategies that companies take in terms of that.

But the focus remains on sustainability. There are new topics that come up on the agenda.

Like what?

For example, sustainable AI: How do you combine using AI for sustainability, but also reducing the negative environmental impact of AI? The scale-up of AI is one of the most important topics.

Resilience is another one. In terms of materials or resources, access to resources is becoming quite a critical topic. It is also very much needed for this AI transformation. The resources we need, we don’t really have them here in Europe, so we need to become a little bit more thoughtful about how we use what we already have access to.

The third topic is supply chain. We have had huge supply chain disruptions in recent months, and many people have thought about optimizing supply chains — not only as before, in terms of how fast we get products or resources, or how cheaply we get them, but also in terms of emissions.

For me personally, AI and sustainability is the No. 1 topic. It is super interesting because it is really completely new. We don’t even have very good statistics on what is coming. We know that AI is thirsty, that a lot of water will be used, that it is energy intensive, and that there will be additional emissions. We also know that there are certain regulations, especially in the European Union, about renewable energy use for AI data centers and so on.

Does ESMT have any mechanisms for balancing its sustainability goals with its AI goals?

I think the key leverage that we have is taking care of our emissions. First of all, we had to calculate them, so that is where reporting comes in. There are now better and better ways of doing so, and AI actually helps us calculate our emissions. That is the basic use of AI for sustainability that many companies today practice.

But in addition, once we know the actual numbers, then we also need to focus on reduction. Here, I think the biggest game changer was the installation of the solar panels on our roof.

This is helping a lot. Our colleagues from facilities are very skillful in thinking of new ideas for how we can reduce emissions.

Currently, we are looking into a new air conditioning system. It is not yet decided or finalized, but I think this is one of the key topics, especially with heat waves in Europe and everywhere. We need to take care of these topics and make sure that whatever technology we use is up to standards that allow for savings in energy and emissions.

I think there is quite a lot of potential for different projects with companies that are building data centers. We have some of them in our network. For example, Schwarz Group, is building a data center that will be fully renewable. That obviously allows us to focus on these topics.

There are also interesting social considerations. We know that data centers are often built in places where, let’s say, they do not really allow for progress and development of the local community. I think with time, we should also look more closely at these topics.

Well, what are some of the biggest highlights from the 2025 sustainability report?

For me, it is three things. One, for sure, on the environmental sustainability front, is the renewable energy focus that we have introduced. We have these solar panels on the roof, and they cover around 25% of our total electricity needs. We have also had days this summer when we are fully running on it, and it is beautiful to see.

When you come to our campus, it is the first thing you see on the left. There is a big screen with our energy production that makes it really tangible for visitors and for our students. It shows that we are doing something.

We have also decided to purchase only renewable energy for the remaining energy needs. I think this is also an important decision because it has financial consequences. But it also shows that we truly want to move in the direction of sustainability.

The environmental side is for sure one of the highlights for me. But I think it is also important that we focus on our products, on the services of what we do. This is education, and I am personally involved in the MBA Sustainability in Practice projects. This is when we let our students work with top brands and solve their sustainability challenges.

Can you give some examples of these projects?

This year, we have very cool projects with Deutsche Telekom, our biggest telco company here in Germany. They are also present in the U.S. under a different name, T-Mobile.

With Deutsche Telekom, they work on circularity: How can you create a business model for some of the equipment? This is a very valid topic right now because some resources are not as available as they were before. If you can get them from equipment or products they had before, that is an interesting proposition. But you still need to build a business case for it.

We are also working with Vorwerk Group. They have two products: Thermomix for cooking at home and a vacuum cleaner called Kobold. Both products are sold in a very unusual direct-selling way. You have customer presenters who come to your home and demonstrate how to cook with Thermomix, for example.

Students are looking into how you can include sustainability considerations in these demonstrations, what would appeal to customers, what would help create more sales, and what type of implications this would have for product development — both the hardware and the different cooking apps.

Imagine if they pushed more strongly vegetarian cooking, or if you cooked with all the ingredients of a chicken, including what otherwise might be waste. Then you could have some positive sustainability impact, maybe make people healthier, and make the planet happier overall. That is the project.

With DHL Group, it is also a very interesting topic. Basically, it is about road transport: How do you get goods to customers? DHL Group works across the world with very different types of companies. Sometimes it is one man with a van, and sometimes it is a bigger company.

The question is: How can you electrify them also? How can you help with financial models and leasing options for both very small operators who do not really have much investment possibility to get an electric vehicle, and also the bigger companies that maybe can invest in a fully electrified truck?

I think these are really cool challenges for the students, and they are really invested in solving them. They have supervision from my side, and then they work very closely with the company contact. They visit the factories, they have regular checkups, and within six weeks they are meant to come up with a solution.

That is quite a cool opportunity to learn really by doing.

I understand the Vorwerk project is connected to an MBA alumna. Is she working with you on that, and how did that come together?

Yes. It is the Thermomix project that I explained. We have an alumna who is now head of sustainability at this company. We were happy to be connected over time, but recently we reconnected through the Sustainable Business Roundtable.

There, we discussed the opportunity for them to become part of the project, and she was really keen. It is also very cool to see because she has been in the seats of these students not so long ago. She also had to do her own consulting projects during her study time, so she has a very interesting approach — a different one, I would say, than other companies.

Do you see students choosing ESMT because of the sustainability education and work that you do? Is that a differentiator for you?

I’m a bit in a bubble because I usually deal with the students who are interested in this topic, and they do see our initiatives and choose us, and Berlin, for sustainability considerations.

I think one cool thing that we have — and other schools, for sure, don’t have — is this close contact with industry and with the Sustainable Business Roundtable, which started so early when nobody was really talking about sustainability at all.

Although this initiative is for companies, we always have selected students attending and networking. I also have examples of students who attended or worked on different research or consulting projects with me and companies, and now they are working for those companies. They were also hired. It is a really unusual thing that we do.

What is in the pipeline right now that you are particularly excited about?

There is still quite a lot to do. We want to grow, and obviously that growth needs to be sustainable.

For me, it is interesting to see what the new topics are on the executive education agenda. What is really going to be driving companies? We have had some good programs with companies where they invested four days into sustainability. One company that is also very present in the U.S. is Siemens Energy. We have had, I think, four or five cohorts of employees coming for these four days fully dedicated to sustainability.

But what we would have taught back then, I think, would be a little bit different now. There is a much stronger focus on the business case for sustainability, on supply chain, and on access to resources. Geopolitics is now a factor that influences all of these discussions, and obviously AI.

I hope that soon we will have a company interested in investing a bit more time again into sustainability, and then we could test something completely new. That could be one day on the business case, one day on resilience and geopolitics together, and then a third day on AI, and then maybe some new topic. Maybe thinking again about diversity: Is this bringing value? We also do quite a lot in this area, and I would say this is a topic where students are definitely interested in contributing. Their considerations of diversity are, I think, much different from what our generation focuses on.

I think maybe one more thing helped us: the Financial Times ranking. A couple of years ago, they introduced two sustainability criteria into the ranking. One is ESG and net zero — now it is called something different, climate solutions teaching — and the second one is our carbon footprint.

You could say they are measuring it maybe not perfectly. Other schools may be doing more creative accounting when replying to this ranking. But still, I think it is very useful to be pushed from the outside so that we can see, “We feel that we are doing so well, but we could still improve on some of these criteria.”

That also helps in discussions with colleagues who maybe are a bit more skeptical toward the topic, because they cannot be skeptical when it comes to our ranking. That is how we can also push this.

There has been a pretty pronounced backlash in the United States around sustainability, greenwashing, metrics, and reporting. Where do you think that conversation is now? How does ESMT confront the criticism, and what do you see in the metrics of sustainability reporting?

I think there is definitely more transparency, especially here in Europe, because the large companies are regulated by CSRD. We are not, some SMEs are not, and others who were meant to be are not. But very often, these large companies are asking us — not once, but several times — for information that they have to report. So this transparency obligation is also pushed on others across the value chain.

I think this really helps because everyone wants to win that contract. You have to be able to provide this information. You also cannot lie when you share your emissions data.

There are these Scope 3 measures, and especially in the business school setting, we are not yet fully sure exactly what we should be reporting on. The Greenhouse Gas Protocol normally provides this information for companies, but it is not really providing that information for us. We have to decide, together with other business schools, what is really relevant for us. This is something we will probably be working on in the next months.

But this obligation that is pushed on us and on other companies helps us remain transparent.

The second thing that definitely helps is AI. Today, with different software, and also just with ChatGPT, you can provide much better information than you were able to two years ago, and you can spend less time doing so. This is for sure helping here in Europe.

We also will have this greenwashing regulation, so claims will be regulated as well. Many companies have been very broad in using terms such as “climate-neutral product.” Consumers, as different consumer studies have shown, were not able to understand what it really means. If a shower gel is climate neutral, does that mean it has been produced with no emissions whatsoever? I don’t think people were able to understand this.

DON’T MISS: THE P&Q INTERVIEW: ESMT BERLIN PRESIDENT JÖRG ROCHOLL ON GROWTH, DEEP TECH & COMPETING FOR GLOBAL TALENT AND INSIDE INNOVA EUROPE 2025’S IMPACT-DRIVEN STARTUPS 

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