SECTION 1 | The SSI Website – Terms and Conditions

Please see SECTION 2 below for the terms and conditions of use of the SSI MEMBER PORTAL

1.About the SSI website

By accessing and browsing on solarstewardshipinitiative.org (hereinafter “SSI” or “Site”), you accept, without limitation or reservation, the terms herein. Your access to and use of this Site is subject to the following terms, and all applicable laws, rules and regulations.

The SSI site is wholly owned by Assheton Carter Ltd (trading as TDi Sustainability) (“we”, “us”, or “our”), a company registered in England and Wales (Company Registration Number 08825320) whose registered office address is at C/O Bishop Fleming LLP, 10 North Place, Cheltenham, United Kingdom, GL50 4DW,  on behalf of the Solar Stewardship Initiative (“SSI”). Contact TDi Sustainability at [email protected].

2. Disclaimer

The contents provided on this Site solely serve the purpose of providing information and are legally not binding. Everything on this Site is provided to you “as is” without warranty of any kind, either express or implied.

It is your responsibility to evaluate the accuracy, completeness and usefulness of any opinions, advice, services or other information provided. In addition, the materials contained in this Site could contain technical inaccuracies or typographical errors. Changes are periodically added to the information herein. TDi Sustainability may make improvements and/or changes on this Site at any time without notice.

We shall not be liable for, any damages to, or viruses that may infect, your computer equipment or other property on account of your access to, use of, or browsing within this Site, or your downloading of any materials, data, text, images, video, or audio from this Site. In no event shall TDi Sustainability be liable for any incidental or consequential damages, lost profits, or lost data or any indirect damages.

When referring to internet websites or content of third parties (links), TDi Sustainability assumes no responsibility for the contents of the pages linked. By accessing these links, you leave the information area of this Site. For information provided by third parties, there may be different policies admissible, especially in terms of data protection. We have no control over the contents of those links or resources.

We do not guarantee that the Site will be secure or free from bugs or viruses. You are responsible for configuring your information technology, computer programs and platform to access the Site. You should use your own virus protection software.

3. Intellectual property notice

The words SSI, SOLAR STEWARDSHIP INITIATIVE, and the logos included on this website are trademarks of SSI. They may only be used with the explicit consent of the SSI and are subject to the conditions set by SSI. All other use of those signs will be considered a trademark infringement. SSI reserves all rights in that regard.

4. Privacy Policy

Our collection, use, disclosure, and processing of data, including any information that directly or indirectly identifies a natural person (“Personal Data“), is described in and governed by our Privacy Policy, available here. By using the Portal and our Services, you acknowledge and agree to the terms of the Privacy Policy.

5. Changes

We may make changes to this Site. We may update and change to this Site from time to time to reflect changes to our users’ needs and our business priorities. Our site is made available free of charge. We do not guarantee that this Site, or any content on it, will always be available or be uninterrupted. We may suspend or withdraw or restrict the availability of all or any part of our Site.

We may transfer our rights and obligations under these terms to another organisation.

SECTION 2 | The SSI Portal – Terms and Conditions 

The SSI Portal – Terms and Conditions

 1. About the SSI Portal

1.1 These terms and Conditions (“Agreement”) apply to the Solar Stewardship Initiative Portal located at ww.solarstewardshipinitiative.org (the “Portal”). The Portal is wholly owned by Assheton Carter Ltd (trading as TDi Sustainability) (“we”, “us”, or “our”), a company registered in England and Wales (Company Registration Number 08825320) whose registered office address is at C/O Bishop Fleming LLP, 10 North Place, Cheltenham, United Kingdom, GL50 4DW,  on behalf of the Solar Stewardship Initiative (“SSI”).

1.2 By accessing or using the Portal, you acknowledge that you have entered into this Agreement with us and agree to be bound by its terms. The Agreement sets out the rights and obligations of both  you as a User of the Portal (“User”, “you”, “your”) and us. If you do not agree to the terms of this Agreement, you must not access or use the Portal.

 2. Portal and Services

2.1 Subject to your full compliance with the terms of this Agreement, we grant you access to the Portal, together with the right to access and use the Services (as defined below) solely for your internal business purposes. In order to qualify for access to the Portal you must register. All requests will be reviewed and granted by the SSI at its sole discretion. You are required to register using a valid company email address and access will not be granted if you do not provide a valid company email address. However, the SSI may consider exceptions on a case-by-case basis.

2.2 You may authorise an unlimited number of Users to access the Portal and use our Services on your behalf, strictly provided that, each User is an employee or independent contractor of yours for whose actions and omissions you are responsible. Each User must have a unique username and password which must not be shared. When any User’s employment or other affiliation with you ends, you must immediately remove that User’s access to your Portal account. We reserve the right to suspend or terminate the provision of our Services to any User who violates or is suspected of violating this Agreement, uses our Services in an inappropriate manner or engages in any actions that we believe are harmful to the SSI or any other User. Usernames and passwords are used to authenticate access to the Portal. You are responsible for ensuring only authorised Users access your Portal account, for preventing unauthorised access to the Portal through your Portal account and for all activity that happens on or through your Portal account. You are solely responsible for all activity conducted through your Portal account. You are responsible for any breach of this Agreement by anyone who accesses your Portal account. We will not ask you to share your login details; do not disclosure your login details.

2.3 The Portal is a global initiative specifically designed for the solar industry, enabling Users to engage in efforts to enhance ESG performance and promote responsible production in the solar photovoltaic sector. Users of the Portal fall into five categories: (i) Manufacturer Users; (ii) Buyer Users; (iii) Stakeholder Advisory Group Users (the “SAG Users”), which includes both individual SAG Users and organisational SAG Users; (iv) Users of the SSI Board of Directors; and (v) Users of the SSI Secretariat (“Users”, “you”, “your”). Each category of User may be granted access to the Portal upon the SSI’s approval of their application. Unless expressly stated otherwise, this Agreement applies to all categories of User. By accessing or using the Portal, you acknowledge that you may fall within any of the categories defined above. Through the Portal, we collect and publish information from Users and other public and private third-party sources (such as governmental databases), information on Users held by the SSI, and User audits carried out on behalf of the SSI or by the SSI, which may be shared with other Users. Subject to your compliance with this Agreement, these services are provided to you via the Portal through the following digital solutions (the “Services”):

• Assessments & Certification Section, which aims to provide summary assessment information for Manufacturer Users in a map or table view, including their respective certification statuses.
• Resources Section, which aims to provide SSI newsletters, recordings from previous training sessions and access documents exclusive to Users.
• User Companies Section, which aims to provide information about each Manufacturer User, including their individual site certification status and summary reports from ESG and Traceability Standard assessments.

2.4 The Services are evolving and we reserve the right to amend the Services from time to time when making changes or improvements to the Services, or otherwise if required by any applicable statutory or regulatory requirement.

2.5 We may from time to time provide promotional, testing, early access or beta services at our sole discretion (“Test Services”). These Test Services do not form part of the Services under this Agreement, nor is there any obligation on us to provide any Test Service as part of our Services under this Agreement. However, all Test Services shall form part of the Confidential Information that all Users must not disclose. In our sole discretion we may decide to add, remove or modify the Test Services at any time. We do not charge for your access or use of the Test Services.

2.6 Whilst further information about our Services is available on the Portal, any descriptions or illustrations on our website are published for the sole purpose of giving an approximate idea of the Services. They will not form part of the Agreement or have any contractual force.

3. Confidentiality

For purposes of this Agreement, “Confidential Information” means all information you provide to us that: (i) you designate as “confidential” or “proprietary”; or (ii) under the circumstances, we reasonably should understand to be confidential or proprietary. Notwithstanding the foregoing, “Confidential Information” does not include information that: (a) is or becomes publicly available through no fault or unauthorised disclosure by us; (b) we receive in good faith from a third party without knowledge of any obligation of confidentiality to you; or (c) we independently develop without reference to or use of your Confidential Information. We acknowledge the highly sensitive and confidential nature of your Confidential Information. We will not disclose your Confidential Information to any third party except as required by law, in accordance with our privacy policies and this Agreement, or with your prior consent. We will ensure that its employees and independent contractors are subject to reasonable confidentiality obligations consistent with this Agreement. Information and content made available on the Portal by the SSI and/ or us including but not limited to training courses, recordings, meeting presentation documents, data regarding proposed site assessment dates is not permitted to be shared outside of your company. Any breach of this clause may result in suspension or revocation of your access to the Portal.

4. Intellectual Property Rights

Using our Services does not give you ownership of any intellectual property rights in our Services or the Portal. We own or are the licensee of all intellectual property rights to the Portal and its modules (including all modifications, revisions and derivative works, and all programs, enhancements, design concepts and other documentation, developed for or relating to the Portal), all tables (including the structure and fields) and forms developed for such modules, our Services, and the SSI’s or TDi Sustainability’s (as applicable) trade marks, service marks and logos. Our trade marks, service marks, and logos are protected by law throughout the world, and may not be copied or imitated. You may not copy, modify, distribute, sell, or license any part of our Portal, the Services or any software we use, nor may you reverse engineer any of our Portal, the Services or attempt to extract the source code of any software we use in providing our Services.

5. Warranties and Liability

5.1 You warrant and represent that (1) you have the authority to enter into this Agreement; and (2) you will comply with applicable laws in relation this Agreement.

5.2 We provide our Services to companies that are acting in the course of their business. We do not make any specific warranties, promises or commitments about our Services, the content within our Services, the specific functions of our Services or their reliability, availability, accuracy or ability to meet your needs. We grant access to the Portal and provide our Services on an “as is” basis. To the extent permitted by law, we exclude all conditions, warranties, representations or other terms that might otherwise be implied into this Agreement.

5.3 We shall not be liable for, any damages to, or viruses that may infect, your computer equipment or other property on account of your access to, use of, or browsing within the Portal, or your downloading of any materials, data, text, images, video, or audio from the Portal. In no event shall we be liable for any incidental or consequential damages, lost profits, or lost data or any indirect damages. When referring to internet websites or content of third parties (including links to such websites), we have no responsibility for the contents of the pages linked. By accessing these links, you leave the information area of the Portal. For information provided by third parties, there may be different policies applicable, especially in terms of data protection. We have no control over the content of those links or resources. We do not guarantee that the Portal will be secure or free from bugs or viruses, nor do we guarantee the accuracy of any content within the Portal. You are responsible for configuring your information technology, computer programs and platform to access the Portal. You should use your own virus protection software.

5.4 Nothing in this Agreement excludes or limits any liability which cannot legally be excluded or limited by applicable law, for example liability for (1) death or personal injury caused by negligence; and (2) fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation.

5.5 Subject to 5.4, we will not be liable to you, whether in contract, tort (including negligence), for breach of statutory duty, or otherwise, arising under or in connection with the Agreement for (a) loss of profits; (b) loss of sales or business; (c) loss of agreements or contracts; loss of anticipated savings; (e) loss of use or corruption of software, data or information; (f) loss of or damage to goodwill; and (g) any indirect or consequential loss.

5.6 Subject to 5.4 and any term which limits or excludes liability to you our total liability to you arising under or in connection with the Agreement, whether in contract, tort (including negligence), breach of statutory duty, or otherwise, will be limited, in the aggregate, to £10,000.

5.7 Unless you notify us that you intend to make a claim in connection with this Agreement within the notice period, we shall have no liability for that claim. The notice period shall start on the day on which you became, or ought reasonably to have become, aware of having grounds to make a claim and shall expire three months from that date. The notice must be in writing and must identify the grounds for the claim in reasonable detail.

5.8 All Test Services are also provided “AS IS” and “AS AVAILABLE”, without any warranties of any kind, whether express or implied. To the maximum extent permitted by law, our total liability in the aggregate arising out of or in connection with any Test Services shall be limited to one hundred pounds sterling (£100).

6. Indemnification

You shall indemnify us and hold us including our affiliates, officers, agents and employees against all liabilities, damages, losses (including loss of profits, loss of business, loss of reputation, loss of savings and loss of opportunity), fines, awards, expenses and costs (including all interest, penalties, legal costs (calculated on a full indemnity basis) and reasonable professional costs and expenses) arising out of or in connection with your use of the Portal, the Services or breach of this Agreement by you or anyone accessing the Services through your Portal account.

7. Personal Data

Our collection, use, disclosure, and processing of data, including any information that directly or indirectly identifies a natural person (“Personal Data“), is described in and governed by our Privacy Policy, available here. By using the Portal and our Services, you acknowledge and agree to the terms of the Privacy Policy.

8. Force Majeure

We shall not be in breach of this Agreement nor liable for any delay in performing, or failure to perform, any of our obligations under this Agreement if such delay or failure results from events, circumstances or causes beyond our control, including without limitation acts of God, flood, drought, earthquake or other natural disaster, epidemic or pandemic, terrorist attack, civil commotion or riots, war, threat of or preparation for war, imposition of sanctions, collapse of buildings, fire, explosion or accident, interruption or failure of utility services, or any laws or action taken by a government or public authority, outage of telecommunication or internet or other circumstances beyond outside our control. In such circumstances, the time for performance shall be extended for a period equal to the period during which the performance of the obligation has been delayed or failed to be performed. Nothing in this clause shall relieve you of your obligation to pay the Annual Fee due under this Agreement.

9. Assignments

We may at any time assign, novate, transfer, charge, subcontract or deal in any other manner with any or all our rights and obligations under this Agreement, including in connection with any merger, acquisition or sale of our business or assets or any part thereof. You shall not assign, transfer, charge, subcontract or deal in any other manner with any of your rights or obligations under this Agreement without our prior written consent.

10. Severance

If any provision or part-provision of this Agreement is or becomes invalid, illegal or unenforceable, it shall be deemed deleted, but that shall not affect the validity and enforceability of the rest of this Agreement. If any provision or part-provision is deemed deleted under this clause, we shall issue replacement terms for this Agreement.

11. Third Party Rights

This Agreement does not give rise to any rights under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999 for any third party to enforce any term of this Agreement.

12. Notices

Any notice given by us to you under or in connection with this Agreement shall be delivered by email to the email address specified by you at the time of registration or otherwise as provided by you as part of your profile on the Portal. Any notice given by the you to us under or in connection with this Agreement shall be delivered by email to the following address: [email protected].  A notice transmitted by email shall be deemed to have been received at the time of transmission. Nothing in this clause applies to the service of any proceedings or any documents in any legal action or, where applicable, any arbitration or other method of dispute resolution.

13. Entire Agreement

This Agreement, together with the Privacy Policy, governs constitutes the entire agreement between you and us and supersedes any prior terms and conditions regarding the matters addressed in this Agreement. WE DO NOT AGREE TO STANDARD, BOILERPLATE, OR OTHER TERMS AND CONDITIONS IN ANY PURCHASE ORDERS OR ORDER FORMS FROM YOU. If your purchasing process requires the use of purchase orders, you agree that no terms or conditions in any of your purchase orders will apply to us or modify this Agreement.

14. Changes to this Agreement

If we update this Agreement, we will publish the updated version on our website. For any material changes, we will provide you with at least thirty (30) days’ notice via email to the address associated with your Portal account.

15. Governing Law and Jurisdiction

This Agreement and any dispute or claim arising out of or in connection with it or its subject matter or formation (including non-contractual disputes or claims) shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the law of England and Wales. Each party irrevocably agrees that the courts of England and Wales shall have exclusive jurisdiction to settle any dispute or claim arising out of or in connection with this Agreement and its formation.