Privacy policy

We minimise the data we collect, and we never sell it or share it for advertising. This policy explains what we collect, why, how long we keep it, and which third-party providers are involved in running the service.

What data is collected

When you create an account we ask for your name, email address, and optionally your institution. You can change or remove these at any time from your profile page.

Each API request is logged. API request logs do not contain IP addresses or usernames, they record only the request parameters and timing, which we use to diagnose problems and to produce anonymous statistics about API usage.

Website analytics are provided by Fathom, a privacy-focused analytics tool that stores no personally identifiable information, does not track you across visits, and does not use cookies.

How data is used

• Communications. We use your name and email to contact you about news only if you opt in to the newsletter — at most once every two months. The forum sends notifications according to your forum settings.
• Aggregate statistics. Institution names and email domains are used to produce aggregated, anonymised statistics about where our users are based. API logs are used to produce anonymous usage statistics.

How long data is kept

• User profiles are kept for as long as your account is active.
• API logs older than 7 days are automatically deleted from the online system.
• Fathom analytics are retained indefinitely. They do not include any personally identifiable information (see usefathom.com/compliance).
• System and database backups are retained for a maximum of 6 months.

Cookies

We use a small number of strictly functional first-party cookies to:

• identify your session and protect against Cross-Site-Request-Forgery (CSRF) attacks;
• remember whether you are logged in;
• remember that you have dismissed the welcome notice.

We do not use cookies for advertising, analytics, or cross-site tracking.

Third-party services

We rely on a small number of third-party providers to run the service. Where a provider processes data on our behalf it does so under our instructions.

• Hetzner — hosts our servers and database (Germany).
• CloudFlare — sits in front of the site as a CDN and security layer, processing connection metadata (including IP addresses) in transit.
• Amazon Web Services (AWS) — sends our transactional email.
• MapTiler — displays the map.
• hCaptcha — protects our registration form from automated abuse. When you register, hCaptcha receives your IP address and interaction data to assess whether you are human.
• Fathom Analytics — privacy-focused, cookie-free usage analytics (see above).

Changes to this policy

This policy may be changed at any time with changes published through updates to this document. Material changes to the policy will be communicated to all registered users by email.

User rights

To request a copy of your personal data, email us with your username. To delete your account, email us; your account data is removed from our systems, though it may persist in backups until those expire (see retention above).

Questions regarding this policy or the Renewables.ninja service can be sent to our contact address.

History

Last updated: 2 June 2026

• 2 June 2026: Updated to reflect maps being hosted through MapTiler; improvements for clarity and conciseness
• 8 December 2022: Updated to reflect the move to Hetzner for hosting
• 23 April 2019: Updated to reflect use of Fathom for analytics
• 24 May 2018: Initial version