Privacy Policy

1. An overview of data protection

General

The following gives a simple overview of what happens to your personal information when you visit our website. Personal information is any data with which you could be personally identified. Detailed information on the subject of data protection can be found in our privacy policy found below.

Analytics and third-party tools

When visiting our website, statistical analyses may be made of your surfing behavior. This happens primarily using cookies and analytics. The analysis of your surfing behavior is usually anonymous, i.e. we will not be able to identify you from this data. You can object to this analysis or prevent it by not using certain tools. Detailed information can be found in the following privacy policy.

You can object to this analysis. We will inform you below about how to exercise your options in this regard.

2. General information and mandatory information

Notice concerning the party responsible for this website

The party responsible for processing data on this website is:

Stiftung World Future Council
Dorotheenstraße 15
D-22301 Hamburg

Telephone: 040-3070914-0
Email: info@renewablescongress.org

The responsible party is the natural or legal person who alone or jointly with others decides on the purposes and means of processing personal data (names, email addresses, etc.).

Revocation of your consent to the processing of your data

Many data processing operations are only possible with your express consent. You may revoke your consent at any time with future effect. An informal email making this request is sufficient. The data processed before we receive your request may still be legally processed.

Right to data portability

You have the right to have data which we process based on your consent or in fulfillment of a contract automatically delivered to yourself or to a third party in a standard, machine-readable format. If you require the direct transfer of data to another responsible party, this will only be done to the extent technically feasible.

SSL or TLS encryption

This site uses SSL or TLS encryption for security reasons and for the protection of the transmission of confidential content, such as the inquiries you send to us as the site operator. You can recognize an encrypted connection in your browser’s address line when it changes from “http://” to “https://” and the lock icon is displayed in your browser’s address bar.

If SSL or TLS encryption is activated, the data you transfer to us cannot be read by third parties.

Information, blocking, deletion

As permitted by law, you have the right to be provided at any time with information free of charge about any of your personal data that is stored as well as its origin, the recipient and the purpose for which it has been processed. You also have the right to have this data corrected, blocked or deleted. You can contact us at any time using the address given in our legal notice if you have further questions on the topic of personal data.

3. Data protection officer

Statutory data protection officer

Please contact our Data Protection Officer for all questions and enquiries

WFC Data Protection Officer
Dorotheenstraße 15
D-22301 Hamburg

Telephone: 040-3070914-0
Email: info@renewablescongress.org

4. Data collection on our website

Cookies

Neither websites of the GRC uses cookies.

Server log files

The website provider automatically collects and stores information that your browser automatically transmits to us in “server log files”. These are:

  • Browser type and browser version
  • Operating system used
  • Referrer URL
  • Host name of the accessing computer
  • Time of the server request
  • IP address

These data will not be combined with data from other sources.

The basis for data processing is Art. 6 (1) (b) GDPR, which allows the processing of data to fulfill a contract or for measures preliminary to a contract.

Contact form

Should you send us questions via the contact form, we will collect the data entered on the form, including the contact details you provide, to answer your question and any follow-up questions. We do not share this information without your permission.

We will, therefore, process any data you enter onto the contact form only with your consent per Art. 6 (1)(a) GDPR. You may revoke your consent at any time. An informal email making this request is sufficient. The data processed before we receive your request may still be legally processed.

We will retain the data you provide on the contact form until you request its deletion, revoke your consent for its storage, or the purpose for its storage no longer pertains (e.g. after fulfilling your request). Any mandatory statutory provisions, especially those regarding mandatory data retention periods, remain unaffected by this provision.

Registration on our website

For special occasions, such as events, surveys etc., you have the possibility to register directly on our website with the indication of our personal data. Which personal data is transmitted is determined by the registration mask, but generally includes your full name, organisation, field of work, and e-mail address.

By registering on our website, the IP address, date, and time of the registration are also stored. The storage of this data takes place against the background that this is the only way to prevent the misuse of our services, and, if necessary, to make it possible to investigate committed offenses. Insofar, the storage of this data is necessary to secure the controller. This data is not passed on to third parties unless there is a statutory obligation to pass on the data, or if the transfer serves the aim of criminal prosecution.

We will retain the data you provide on the contact form until you request its deletion, revoke your consent for its storage, or the purpose for its storage no longer pertains (e.g. after fulfilling your request). Any mandatory statutory provisions, especially those regarding mandatory data retention periods, remain unaffected by this provision.

5. Social Media

We at Global Renewables Congress (GRC) aim to improve your user experience whilst ensuring the highest possible level of data security. We encourage our users to share our content on their Social Media profiles such as Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

Until recently however, these social share options connected to your profile unbeknownst to you and collected data regarding your surfing behaviour, even if you did not click on “share”.

We decided to safeguard your data privacy, and are therefore using the Shariff “one-click for-more-data protection solution” Plugin. “Shariff” replaces the typical share-buttons for social networks. Further information can be obtained here.

The Shariff Plugin allows you to share your favourite web content without compromising your privacy. The Shariff button establishes direct contact between the social network and the user only when you actively click the ‘Share’ button. Only then will your data be transferred to the respective social network. If, however, the Shariff button is not clicked, no exchange will be made between you and the social network.

We would like to point out that every social network has their own privacy policy, which is subject to change. To learn more about the purpose and extent of data collection by the providers as well as your relevant rights and setting options to protect your privacy, please refer to the providers’ privacy policies as linked below:

  • Facebook Inc., 1601 South California Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94304, USA
  • Google Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA
  • Twitter Inc., 1355 Market Street, Suite 900, San Francisco, CA 94103, USA
  • Tumblr Inc. , 35 East 21st St, 10th Floor, New York, NY 10010, USA
  • Pinterest Inc., 808 Brannan St, San Francisco, CA 94103, USA

Twitter plugin

Functions of the Twitter service have been integrated into our website and app. These features are offered by Twitter Inc., 1355 Market Street, Suite 900, San Francisco, CA 94103, USA. When you use Twitter and the “Retweet” function, the websites you visit are connected to your Twitter account and made known to other users. In doing so, data will also be transferred to Twitter. We would like to point out that, as the provider of these pages, we have no knowledge of the content of the data transmitted or how it will be used by Twitter. For more information on Twitter’s privacy policy, please go to https://twitter.com/privacy.

Your privacy preferences with Twitter can be modified in your account settings at https://twitter.com/account/settings.

6. Analytics and advertising

Google Analytics

This website does not use Google Analytics, a web analytics service. It is operated by Google Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA.

IP anonymization

We have activated the IP anonymization feature on this website. Your IP address will be shortened by Google within the European Union or other parties to the Agreement on the European Economic Area prior to transmission to the United States. Only in exceptional cases is the full IP address sent to a Google server in the US and shortened there. Google will use this information on behalf of the operator of this website to evaluate your use of the website, to compile reports on website activity, and to provide other services regarding website activity and Internet usage for the website operator. The IP address transmitted by your browser as part of Google Analytics will not be merged with any other data held by Google.

Objecting to the collection of data

You can prevent the collection of your data by Google Analytics by clicking on the following link. An opt-out cookie will be set to prevent your data from being collected on future visits to this site: Disable Google Analytics.

For more information about how Google Analytics handles user data, see Google’s privacy policy: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6004245?hl=en.

Google reCAPTCHA

We use “Google reCAPTCHA” (hereinafter “reCAPTCHA”) on our websites. This service is provided by Google Inc., 1600 Amphitheater Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA (“Google”).

reCAPTCHA is used to check whether the data entered on our website (such as on a contact form) has been entered by a human or by an automated program. To do this, reCAPTCHA analyzes the behavior of the website visitor based on various characteristics. This analysis starts automatically as soon as the website visitor enters the website. For the analysis, reCAPTCHA evaluates various information (e.g. IP address, how long the visitor has been on the website, or mouse movements made by the user). The data collected during the analysis will be forwarded to Google.

The reCAPTCHA analyses take place completely in the background. Website visitors are not advised that such an analysis is taking place.

Data processing is based on Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR. The website operator has a legitimate interest in protecting its site from abusive automated crawling and spam.

For more information about Google reCAPTCHA and Google’s privacy policy, please visit the following links: https://www.google.com/intl/de/policies/privacy/ and https://www.google.com/recaptcha/intro/android.html

7. Newsletter

Newsletter data

If you would like to receive our newsletter, we require a valid email address as well as information that allows us to verify that you are the owner of the specified email address and that you agree to receive this newsletter. No additional data is collected or is only collected on a voluntary basis. We only use this data to send the requested information and do not pass it on to third parties.

We will, therefore, process any data you enter onto the contact form only with your consent per Art. 6 (1) (a) GDPR. You can revoke consent to the storage of your data and email address as well as their use for sending the newsletter at any time, e.g. through the “unsubscribe” link in the newsletter. The data processed before we receive your request may still be legally processed.

The data provided when registering for the newsletter will be used to distribute the newsletter until you cancel your subscription when said data will be deleted. Data we have stored for other purposes (e.g. email addresses for the members area) remain unaffected.

MailChimp

This website uses the services of MailChimp to send newsletters. This service is provided by Rocket Science Group LLC, 675 Ponce De Leon Ave NE, Suite 5000, Atlanta, GA 30308, USA.

MailChimp is a service which organizes and analyzes the distribution of newsletters. If you provide data (e.g. your email address) to subscribe to our newsletter, it will be stored on MailChimp servers in the USA.

MailChimp is certified under the EU-US Privacy Shield. The Privacy Shield is an agreement between the European Union (EU) and the US to ensure compliance with European privacy standards in the United States.

We use MailChimp to analyze our newsletter campaigns. When you open an email sent by MailChimp, a file included in the email (called a web beacon) connects to MailChimp’s servers in the United States. This allows us to determine if a newsletter message has been opened and which links you click on. In addition, technical information is collected (e.g. time of retrieval, IP address, browser type, and operating system). This information cannot be assigned to a specific recipient. It is used exclusively for the statistical analysis of our newsletter campaigns. The results of these analyses can be used to better tailor future newsletters to your interests.

If you do not want your usage of the newsletter to be analyzed by MailChimp, you will have to unsubscribe from the newsletter. For this purpose, we provide a link in every newsletter we send. You can also unsubscribe from the newsletter directly on the website.

Data processing is based on Art. 6 (1) (a) GDPR. You may revoke your consent at any time by unsubscribing to the newsletter. The data processed before we receive your request may still be legally processed.

The data provided when registering for the newsletter will be used to distribute the newsletter until you cancel your subscription when said data will be deleted from our servers and those of MailChimp. Data we have stored for other purposes (e.g. email addresses for the members area) remains unaffected.

For details, see the MailChimp privacy policy at https://mailchimp.com/legal/terms/.

Completion of a data processing agreement

We have entered into a data processing agreement with MailChimp, in which we require MailChimp to protect the data of our customers and not to disclose said data to third parties. This agreement may be viewed at the following link: https://mailchimp.com/legal/forms/data-processing-agreement/sample-agreement/.

8. Plugins and tools

YouTube

Our website uses plugins from YouTube, which is operated by Google. The operator of the pages is YouTube LLC, 901 Cherry Ave., San Bruno, CA 94066, USA.

If you visit one of our pages featuring a YouTube plugin, a connection to the YouTube servers is established. Here the YouTube server is informed about which of our pages you have visited.

If you’re logged in to your YouTube account, YouTube allows you to associate your browsing behavior directly with your personal profile. You can prevent this by logging out of your YouTube account.

YouTube is used to help make our website appealing. This constitutes a justified interest pursuant to Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR.

Further information about handling user data, can be found in the data protection declaration of YouTube under https://www.google.de/intl/de/policies/privacy.

Google Web Fonts

For uniform representation of fonts, this page uses web fonts provided by Google. When you open a page, your browser loads the required web fonts into your browser cache to display texts and fonts correctly.

For this purpose your browser has to establish a direct connection to Google servers. Google thus becomes aware that our web page was accessed via your IP address. The use of Google Web fonts is done in the interest of a uniform and attractive presentation of our website. This constitutes a justified interest pursuant to Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR.

If your browser does not support web fonts, a standard font is used by your computer.

Further information about handling user data, can be found at https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq and in Google’s privacy policy at https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/.

Please note

This Privacy Policy governs all pages of the GRC, www.renewablescongress.org. It does not apply to pages hosted by other organisations. The GRC website may be linked to the websites of such other parties but those other sites may have their own privacy policies which apply to them.

By using the GRC Website you consent to the terms of this Privacy Policy. The GRC may change the terms of this Privacy Policy from time to time and if such changes are made, we may place notices on the website so that you can be aware of them. Your continued use of the GRC Website will be on the terms of this Privacy Policy as amended from time to time.