The Society for the Reduction of Carbon Ltd (trading as Carbon Co-op) is a registered society under the Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies Act 2014 (Registration Number 31342R). You can contact us using either post, email, or phone using the details provided at the bottom of this page.
Our Data Protection Register number is ZA520021. We have not appointed a Data Protection Officer as we have determined that we are not required to do so. However, if you have specific concerns relating to data protection you can send an email to dataprotection@carbon.coop and this will be directed to the most appropriate member of staff. Alternatively, you can directly contact the Committee by sending an email to board@carbon.coop.
Carbon Co-op is a non-profit membership organisation and was created to support its members in making substantial reductions in their household Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions (the specific target being a reduction of 80% by 2050) and to carry on any trade, industry or business for the benefit of the community which promotes and supports the development of carbon reduction measures, focusing on but not limited to energy demand reduction and renewable energy supply. All profits are reinvested in the organisation.
We aim to use and promote high standards of data privacy and information security in the delivery of our services and products to our members, customers, and clients.
You have a set of rights in relation to personal information we hold about you under the Data Protection Act 2018. You can find out more about this on the website of the Information Commissioners Office. These rights include but are not limited to:
- The right to withdraw consent at any time (where relevant i.e. you have previously given your consent to us for data processing).
- The right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority (in this case ICO).
Below we outline the purposes for which we process individual personal data and their lawful basis. We have broken this down by type of subject as well as the different services we offer. These are not mutually exclusive categories and a subject may fall into more than one of these.
Member
If you are a member we are required to keep a record of your name and address by law. The fact you are a member is also a matter of public record and as such your name is included in a publicly available register of members of the Society. We also use this data (and other additional optionally provided information such as your telephone number and email address) to notify you of any General Meetings or other proceedings of the Society as required by our rules. We do not use this information for any other purpose (such as those described below) unless you expressly permit it. We are required to retain a record of your membership for the previous accounting year even if your membership has lapsed. We will then retain a record of your name and address and the fact you were a member for up to 3 years after this time unless you request otherwise.
We also use personal information about members in other ways which are described below, but in these cases we rely on your consent for doing this or this is required in the course of us providing you with products and services under contract.
Customer/Client
As a customer/client of our business we use your name, postal address, postcode, email address, and telephone number in order to provide you with products and services under contract. We retain this information for a period of up to 3 years after the conclusion of our contractual relationship with you.
Mailing lists
If you sign up to our member or supporter email lists you provide your consent to allow us to use your email address to contact you with news and information about retrofit, energy efficiency, renewable energy, and energy systems, events organised by Carbon Co-op, and member offers from trusted partners. You can also optionally provide us with your name, postcode, and occupation and this maybe used to tailor the information we send to you.
You can withdraw your consent and remove yourself from our email lists at any time.
Every email includes a link which enables you to remove yourself from the email list permanently.
My Home Energy Planner
This paid service collects information about your home and how you use energy in it. Much of the data collected in the course of an assessment about your home does not constitute personal data on its own, but we recognise that when it is combined with other data we may hold about you that it can constitute personal data.
This information is collected for the purpose of providing you with an energy assessment. We retain a copy of your assessment for a period of 5 years after it is produced in case you lose your copy and need to retrieve it.
Data collected as part of the assessment is also made available for you to access through the Membership Hub. If you subscribe to other optional hub services (such as the Smart Meter, Demand Side Response, or Whole House Retrofit services) this data maybe combined with other data we hold about you and processed to provide you with additional insights about your energy use and lifestyle and measures you can implement to reduce your energy use, cost of energy, and CO2 emissions.
Data collected through this service maybe anonymised and aggregated with other personal data and used for other research or commercial purposes in pursuit of the objectives of the Society.
Energy Monitoring Service
This service collects energy and environmental monitoring data, typically relating to electricity and gas usage in a home (although it can be used for more other purposes). This data can be optionally aggregated and used as an input to the My Home Energy Planner service described above. You can also optionally join a ‘Group’ which may allow your data (or an aggregated version of it) to be viewed by other users. By default, data processed by this service is stored in a pseudo-anonymised form. We do not use this data for any other purpose unless you expressly permit it.
Smart Meter Data Service (PowerShaper Monitor)
Our optional Smart Meter Data Service (branded as PowerShaper Monitor) connects to your smart meters (or an intermediate system) and collects data about electricity and gas usage (including consumption, export, tariff, and maximum demand) associated with those meters.
We anonymise and aggregate smart meter data for all users and certain (sufficiently large) sub-groups of users to produce a dataset of collective consumption/export for educational and research purposes as well as to support the identification of groups of users whose usage could be aggregated and sold to other grid actors as part of our Demand Side Response service.
Data collected as part of this service is also made available for you to access through the Membership Hub. If you subscribe to other optional hub services (such as the Smart Meter, Demand Side Response, or Whole House Retrofit services) this data maybe combined with other data we hold about you and processed to provide you with additional insights about your energy use and lifestyle and measures you can implement to reduce your energy use, cost of energy, and CO2 emissions.
Demand Side Response Pilot (Powershaper Flex)
Our Demand Side Response service (branded as PowerShaper Flex) remotely operates devices in your home in a non-disruptive manner in order to provide services to other grid actors. We pay you for providing this service acting as an intermediary between you and other grid actors (commonly referred too as an ‘aggregator’). The operation of this service requires that we collect data from your smart meter and other systems we may install in your home for the purposes of operations, control, measurement, verification, and billing. Your participation in this service is governed by a contract and a set of Terms and Conditions which you will have received when registering for the service.
Data collected in the operation of this service maybe aggregated and anonymised and used for the purpose of research and education by third parties.
Normalised Metered Energy Savings (PowerShaper Tracker)
Our Normalised Metered Energy Savings calculation tool (branded as PowerShaper Tracker) is used to verify the impact of energy efficiency interventions via comparison of pre-works & post-works energy usage, normalised against external temperature and occupancy. Delivery of this service requires processes information about electricity and gas usage (including consumption, export) which is either uploaded as a CSV file or sourced directly from our Smart Meter Data service (see above), against floor area (optional) and location of your property (defined by UK full postcode). Location data is drawn from the Copernicus Climate Data Store API – in calling this service we share the location of your property based on a latitude and longitude derived from your full postcode.
Data collected through this service maybe anonymised and aggregated with other personal data and used for other research or commercial purposes in pursuit of the objectives of the Society.
Membership Hub
Carbon Co-op provides all members with access to the Membership Hub. This is a dashboard and portal for all of our services (including but no limited too Smart Meter, Demand Side Response, Environmental/Energy Monitoring, Whole House Retrofit).
Data collected through this service maybe anonymised and aggregated with other personal data and used for other research or commercial purposes in pursuit of the objectives of the Society.
Community Forum
What information do we collect
To run the forum we collect information of users necessary for registration (name and email address). We also log the IP address used for registration and which posts are made from to prevent abuse of the services.
What do we use your information for?
Any of the information we collect from you may be used in one of the following ways:
- To personalize your experience — your information helps us to better respond to your individual needs.
- To improve our site — we continually strive to improve our site offerings based on the information and feedback we receive from you.
- To improve member service — your information helps us to more effectively respond to your member requests and support needs.
- To send periodic emails — The email address you provide may be used to send you information, notifications that you request about changes to topics or in response to your user name, respond to inquiries, and/or other requests or questions.
Partnership
If our organisation enters into a partnership with your organisation we may retain a record of the names, emails, and telephone numbers of you and your colleagues/employees for the purpose of managing this partnership. These records may be retained indefinitely and at least for 5 years but will only be used in pursuit of related and proportionate activity.
Legitimate Interests
Carbon Co-op does not rely solely on consent as the lawful basis for processing personal information. Following an assessment of our legitimate interests we assert that:
- We can use data relating to our members for purposes in pursuit of the objectives of our Society provided this data has been suitably pseudo-anonymised, in particular where it is presented in research, publications, and public presentations where systematic identification would be difficult.
Use of cookies
Our website and community forum uses cookies. At present these are all necessary for the functioning of the site.
Necessary cookies
These cookies are technically necessary for the site to work because of its underlying technology:
| Name | Purpose | Kind of data | Sessional or persistent? |
| PHPSESSID | Used to differentiate the different users using the site– necessary for various site functions. | Unique token | Sessional |