From the opening of its new website in September 2026, membership of the World Society of Sustainable Energy Technologies is held upon an annual subscription of ten pounds. The subscription applies to every member admitted from that date. For members admitted earlier it takes effect at the conclusion of the complimentary year described below, upon the date stated in each member's own account.
Membership was formerly constituted as a single payment, rendered once and never revisited. Such an arrangement can maintain a register of names; it cannot maintain anything that continues. What the Society now undertakes on behalf of its members does continue: Special Interest Groups meeting to a published timetable, an account and a verifiable certificate for every member, charges reduced or waived entirely at the affiliated journals, and a published record held upon the Society's own site rather than dispersed across the services of others. The subscription is what sustains them. A single rate is charged to every member of the Society; there is no fee upon joining, and no grade of membership is charged at a higher rate than another.
Every member admitted before the new site opened has been granted a year at no charge, in recognition of the support they have already given the Society. Each account states the date to which that membership is paid. Nothing is payable, and no action is required, before it.
Upon that date the subscription is taken from the card or account last used and the membership continues without interruption. Fourteen days beforehand the Society writes to the member, stating what will be taken, upon what date, and where it may be stopped; that notice is sent whether or not the member has had occasion to correspond with the Society in the interim. Renewal may be discontinued at any time before the date, from the payments page of the account, and doing so withdraws nothing: the membership runs to the date to which it is paid, and the membership number and the certificate are permanent in either event. Should a member wish to reconsider after a renewal has been taken, the Society will refund the proportion of the year remaining upon request made within fourteen days.
A membership number remains the property of the member to whom it was issued and is not reissued. The certificate likewise remains valid, since it records the date of admission to the Society, which does not alter. A membership renewed after lapsing is restored from the date of its renewal. Payment is taken by card, by PayPal or by Link, processed by Stripe, which also holds the card; the Society neither holds nor sees a card number. Cards may be changed, payments reviewed and receipts obtained from the payments page.
Publication is charged separately from membership, and separately again from attendance at a conference. The distinction is maintained throughout the Society's publications and is a condition of the indexing upon which its authors depend. SET Proceedings levies an article processing charge upon acceptance, attendance at the conference being neither required for publication nor a payment toward it. The affiliated journals each set their own charges, every journal listing its standard charge alongside that payable by a member of the Society, which in several instances is nothing at all; members are asked to state their membership upon submission. Registration for a conference is set for each conference and published upon that conference's page.