Terms & Conditions

Terms and conditions

This page (together with the documents referred to on it) tells you the terms of use on which you may make use of our website biee.org  (our ‘Website’), whether as a visitor, a registered user or member in respect of any of our services available through our site.

Terms of use

Below are the terms and conditions for the use of this website.

Please read the following terms and conditions before you (a guest visitor to our site, a registered user or a member, collectively a ‘user’) start to use our site.

By using this website (“Website”) you are taken to consent to these terms and conditions (“Terms”). If you do not agree to these terms of use, please refrain from using our site. You may use our site only for lawful purposes.

Other terms and conditions will apply in addition to these terms of use which can be found at

• Membership t & c’s
• Event booking t & c’s

Information about us

www.biee.org is a site operated by British Institute of Energy Economics (BIEE).

BIEE is a company incorporated in England and Wales limited by guarantee (company number 1874015), and is registered as a charity No. 3262875.

BIEE’s registered address is Haines Watts, Milton House, Gatehouse Road, Aylesbury, HP19 8EA.

We are regulated by the Charity Commission.

Accessing our site

Access to our website is permitted on a temporary basis, and we reserve the right to withdraw or amend our site or the services we provide on our site without notice (see below). We will not be liable if for any reason our site is unavailable at any time or for any period.

From time to time, we may restrict access to some parts of our site or our entire site. This may affect guests, users who have registered with us or members although we will use our reasonable endeavours to minimise any disruption that this may cause.

If you choose, or you are provided with, a user name, password or any other piece of information as part of our security procedures, you must treat such information as confidential, and you must not disclose it to any third party. We have the right to disable any user name or password, whether chosen by you or allocated by us, at any time, if in our opinion you have failed to comply with any of the provisions of these terms of use.

When using our site, you must comply with the provisions of our acceptable use policy detailed below.

You are responsible for making all arrangements necessary for you to have access to our site. You are also responsible for ensuring that all persons who access our site through your internet connection are aware of these terms, and that they comply with them.

Information on the Site

BIEE provides access to a range of industry data, news and resources on its website. In so doing, BIEE is explicit in attributing ownership of content. BIEE goes to all reasonable efforts to contact original sources of content in order to gain permission to attach the PDFs or similar files to records on the website.

Links from our site

This website contains links to other websites.

These websites are not operated by the BIEE  and are outside the control of the BIEE. The BIEE accepts no responsibility whatsoever for these websites or their contents. Links to external websites should not be seen as an endorsement of the website or the products, services or information offered by the owner of the website.

Any dealings by you with any third party on or through our site shall be solely between you and that third party and we shall not be responsible for any loss or damage that may arise from any such dealings, nor shall we be deemed to be acting as an agent for you in any such dealings.

Linking to our site

You may link to our website, provided you do so in a way that is fair and legal and does not damage our reputation or take advantage of it, but you must not establish a link in such a way as to suggest any form of association, approval or endorsement on our part where none exists.

You must not establish a link from any website that is not owned by you.

Our site must not be framed on any other site. We reserve the right to withdraw linking permission without notice. The website from which you are linking must comply in all respects with the Content Standards.

It is sometimes possible to access our site through a link located on another website or within a third party email communication. We do not endorse any products, materials, companies or individuals that provide a link to our site or make any warranties, representations or other assurances with respect to any information contained in or at these other sites or third party email communications.

Reliance on information posted

Commentary and other materials posted on our website are not intended to amount to advice on which any reliance should be placed. BIEE is an independent body which does not express opinions of its own. The opinions expressed in our publications and other website content are the responsibility of the authors and we draw your attention to the terms and any disclaimers expressed by the authors (or their publishers) in such publications and website content. We therefore disclaim all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on such materials by any visitor to our site, or by anyone who may be informed of any of its contents.

Intellectual property

Our site and its content (including but not limited to, text, software, sound, photographs, graphics, video, audio, infographics, page layouts and design) are protected by intellectual property rights.

You may print off one copy, and may download extracts, of any page(s) from our site for your personal reference and you may draw the attention of others within your organization to material posted on our site.

Except as expressly authorised in writing either separately or where otherwise stated in these terms of use, you agree not to copy, download, adapt, alter, modify, rent, lease, loan, sell, distribute or create derivative works of any content of our site, or of any site property received by you as part of an order, in whole or in part. All rights not granted or licensed pursuant to these Terms are hereby expressly reserved to us.

The corporate name and logos of the BIEE mentioned or depicted on the website are the property of the BIEE and may not be used without the prior written agreement of the BIEE. Our status (and that of any identified contributors) as the authors of content on our website must always be acknowledged.

Resources Content

BIEE members can access recent presentations and video files from our events electronically without charge.  These cannot be distributed.

Content more than a year old is accessible to all site visistors.

Unless otherwise stated our work including our  video  and audio files are licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

User-generated content

The website may include information and materials uploaded by other users of the website, including to comments and chat functions. This information and these materials have not been verified or approved by us. The views expressed by other users on our website do not represent our views.

Uploading content to our site

Whenever you make use of a feature that allows you to upload content to our website or to make contact with other users the website, you must comply with any reasonable content standards we may publish from time to time.

These content standards apply to any and all material which you contribute to our site (contributions), and to any interactive services associated with it.

You must comply with the spirit of the following standards as well as the letter.

The standards apply to each part of any contribution as well as to its whole.

Contributions must:

• Be accurate (where they state facts);
• Be genuinely held (where they state opinions); and
• Comply with applicable law in the UK and in any country from which they are posted.

Contributions must not:

• Contain any material which is defamatory of any person;
• Contain any material which is obscene, offensive, hateful or inflammatory;
• Promote sexually explicit material;
• Promote violence;
• Promote discrimination based on race, sex, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation or age;
• Infringe any copyright, database right or trademark of any other person;
• Be likely to deceive any person;
• Be made in breach of any legal duty owed to a third party, such as a contractual duty or a duty of confidence;
• Promote any illegal activity;
• Be threatening, abuse or invade another’s privacy, or cause annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety;
• Be used to impersonate any person, or to misrepresent your identity or affiliation with any person;
• Give the impression that they emanate from us, if this is not the case;
• Advocate, promote or assist any unlawful act such as (by way of example only) copyright infringement or computer misuse.

Rights you are giving us to use material you upload

When you upload or post content to our website, unless you explicitly advise us otherwise, you grant us the following rights to use that content. You grant to BIEE a perpetual, non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable licence to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform any user-generated content uploaded to our website.

Acceptable Use

You may use our site only for lawful purposes. You may not use our site:

• In any way that breaches any applicable local, national or international law or regulation;
• In any way that is unlawful or fraudulent, or has any unlawful or fraudulent purpose or effect;
• For the purpose of harming or attempting to harm minors in any way;
• To send, knowingly receive, upload, download, use or re-use any material which does not comply with our content standards (set out below);
• To transmit, or procure the sending of, any unsolicited or unauthorised advertising or promotional material or any other form of similar solicitation (spam);
• To knowingly transmit any data, send or upload any material that contains viruses, Trojan horses, worms, time-bombs, keystroke loggers, spyware, adware or any other harmful programs or similar computer code designed to adversely affect the operation of any computer software or hardware.

You also agree:

• Not to reproduce, duplicate, copy or re-sell any part of our site in contravention of the provisions of our website terms of use detailed above;
• Not to access without authority, interfere with, damage or disrupt:
  • any part of our site;
  • any equipment or network on which our site is stored;
  • any software used in the provision of our site; or
  • any equipment or network or software owned or used by any third party relating to our site.

Interactive services

We may from time to time provide interactive services on our site, including, without limitation:

• Polls and feedback forms.
• Registration and application forms
• Questionnaires

Where we do provide any interactive service, we will provide clear information to you about the kind of service offered, if it is moderated and what form of moderation is used (including whether it is human or technical). We will do our best to assess any possible risks for users (and in particular, for children) from third parties when they use any interactive service provided on our site, and we will decide in each case whether it is appropriate to use moderation of the relevant service (including what kind of moderation to use) in the light of those risks. However, we are under no obligation to oversee, monitor or moderate any interactive service we provide on our site, and we expressly exclude our liability for any loss or damage arising from the use of any interactive service by a user in contravention of our Content Standards, whether the service is moderated or not.

The use of any of our interactive services by a minor is subject to the consent of their parent or guardian. We advise parents who permit their children to use an interactive service that it is important that they communicate with their children about their safety online, as moderation is not foolproof. Minors who are using any interactive service should be made aware of the potential risks to them.

Where we do moderate an interactive service, we will normally provide you with a means of contacting the moderator, should a concern or difficulty arise.

Termination of Use

We will determine, in our discretion, whether there has been a breach of  our use policy through your use of our site. When a breach of this policy has occurred, we may take such action as we deem appropriate. Failure to comply with this acceptable use policy constitutes a material breach of the terms of use as detailed above upon which you are permitted to use our site, and may result in our taking all or any of the following actions:

• Immediate, temporary or permanent withdrawal of your right to use our site;
• Immediate, temporary or permanent removal of any posting or material uploaded by you to our site;
• Issue of a warning to you;
• Legal proceedings against you for reimbursement of all costs on an indemnity basis (including, but not limited to, reasonable administrative and legal costs) resulting from the breach;
• Further legal action against you;
• Disclosure of such information to law enforcement authorities as we reasonably feel is necessary.

We also have the right to disclose your identity to any third party who is claiming that any content posted or uploaded by you to our site constitutes a violation of their intellectual property rights, or of their right to privacy. We have the right to remove any posting you make on our site if, in our opinion, your post does not comply with the content standards set out in our Acceptable Use Policy. You are solely responsible for securing and backing up your content.

The responses described in this policy are not limited, and we may take any other action we reasonably deem appropriate.

Our site changes regularly

We aim to update our site regularly, and may change the content at any time. If the need arises, we may suspend access to our site, or close it indefinitely, at any time, for instance, for operational, regulatory, legal or other reasons. Any of the material on our site may be out of date at any given time, and we are under no obligation to update such material.

Any dealings by you with any third party on or through our site shall be solely between you and that third party and we shall not be responsible for any loss or damage that may arise from any such dealings, nor shall we be deemed to be acting as an agent for you in any such dealings.

Our liability and disclaimers

Whether you are a consumer or a business user

• We do not exclude or limit in any way our liability to you where it would be unlawful to do so. This includes liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence or the negligence of our employees, agents or subcontractors and for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation.
• Further limitations and exclusions of liability will apply to liability arising as a result of the supply of any of our services to you, which will be set out in our terms and conditions referred to in ‘membership’ and ‘events’ terms and conditions.

If you are a business user:

• We exclude all implied conditions, warranties, representations or other terms that may apply to our site or any content on it.
• We will not be liable to you for any loss or damage, whether in contract, tort (including negligence), breach of statutory duty, or otherwise, even if foreseeable, arising under or in connection with: (i) use of, or inability to use, our site; or (ii) use of or reliance on any content displayed on our site.
• In particular, we will not be liable for: (i) loss of profits, sales, business, or revenue; (ii) business interruption; (iii) loss of anticipated savings; (iv) loss of business opportunity, goodwill or reputation; or (v) any indirect or consequential loss or damage.

If you are a consumer user:

• Please note that we only provide our site for your domestic and private use. You agree not to use our site for any commercial or business purposes, and we have no liability to you for any loss of profit, loss of business, business interruption, or loss of business opportunity.
• If defective digital content that we have supplied, damages a device or digital content belonging to you and this is caused by our failure to use reasonable care and skill, we will either repair the damage or pay you compensation. However, we will not be liable for damage that you could have avoided by following our advice to apply an update offered to you free of charge or for damage that was caused by you failing to correctly follow installation instructions or to have in place the minimum system requirements advised by us.

We do not guarantee that our site will be suitable for your purposes or requirements.  If your computer does not support relevant technology, including encryption, you may not be able to use certain services or access certain information on our site.  We will not be responsible for any failure of electronic messages or images (whether via the internet or SMS) sent through the service to reach your intended recipient on the date specified by you.

Our site is accessed via the World Wide Web which is independent of us.  Your use of the World Wide Web is at your own risk and subject to all applicable national and international laws and regulations.  We do not represent that our site is appropriate or available for use in any jurisdiction other than the United Kingdom.

Information about you and visits to our site

We process information about you when you visit our website in accordance with our privacy notice.

Viruses, hacking and other offences

You must not misuse our site by knowingly or negligently introducing viruses, trojans, worms, logic bombs or other material which is malicious or technologically harmful. You must not attempt to gain unauthorised access to our site, the server on which our site is stored or any server, computer or database connected to our site. You must not attack our site via a denial-of-service attack or a distributed denial-of service attack.

By breaching this provision, a criminal offence under the Computer Misuse Act 1990 may have been committed and we will report any such breach to the relevant law enforcement authorities and co-operate with those authorities by disclosing your identity to them. In the event of any such breach or alleged breach, your right to use our site will cease immediately.

We will not be liable for any loss or damage caused by a distributed denial-of-service attack, viruses or other technologically harmful material that may infect your computer equipment, computer programs, data or other proprietary material due to your use of our site or to your downloading of any material posted on it, or on any website linked to it.

Governing law

This website and these terms are governed exclusively by English law and are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales.

Revision

The BIEE reserves the right to revise the terms at any time. Some of the provisions contained in these terms  may also be superseded by provisions or notices published elsewhere on our site.

Further Information

Please contact admin@biee.org