The Green Button effort was created with the support of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST), the Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP), the Utility Communications Architecture International Users Group (UCAIug), and the White House.

The North American Energy Standards Board’s Energy Services Provider Interface (NAESB ESPI standard) serves as the basis for Green Button tech­nology by providing a model for business practices, use cases, and an XML schema for the standard.

In September 2011, U.S. Chief Technology Officer, Aneesh Chopra, challenged utilities across the country to develop “Green Button”—a means of providing detailed customer energy-usage infor­mation available for down­load in a simple, common format.  Through utility industry support for Green Button, consu­mers would be able to make better-informed deci­sions about their energy consump­tion.  Standard­izing on the data format could result in inno­vative appli­cations that might trans­form the way people use energy.

In 2012, the Ontario Ministry of Energy made a similar call to action for the Canadian province and in November of 2021, Green Button data sharing was mandated for the province.

In response to requests from the U.S. DOE, NIST, and the White House to help accel­erate appli­cation dev­elop­ment and industry adoption of the Green Button, a new initiative launched in the form of the Green Button Alliance (“The GBA”) in February of 2015.

The GBA utilized existing standards from NAESB and workgroups of UCAIug to focus its attention on developing a rich, industry eco­system consisting of electric utilities, indepen­dent system operators (ISOs) and regional trans­mission operators (RTOs), suppliers/vendors and users of auto­mation and control systems, tech­nology integrators, policymakers, regulatory agencies, and others.

The Green Button Alliance builds on a founda­tion of technical activities to support the develop­ment, testing, and deploy­ment of the Green Button standard and facili­tate its accelera­tion and wide­spread adoption across the electricity, natural gas, and water markets.

The Green Button Alliance (GBA) is a non-profit organiz­ation, formed in North Carolina, USA, as a 501(c)(3) corp­oration in 2015, to foster the develop­ment, compliance, and wide­spread adoption of the Green Button standard.

It is the single, definitive go-to-place for all things related to the Green Button initiative—from cert­ification of implementa­tions to marketing and education.

Awareness:  To enable end-users (consumers of electricity, natural gas, and water) to change behav­iors assoc­iated with usage, those end-users must be aware of their use and their patterns of use.  To do that, they need access to their usage data.  Once they have access, they can take action to reduce their overall usage; deter­mine if solar might be right for them; allow companies and apps to assist in under­standing where improve­ments (e.g., insulation, UV glazing, new appliances, LED lighting, low-flow showerheads) may be able to help them; and even be able to save money where time-of-use (TOU) pricing for elec­tricity provides incen­tives for off-peak shifting of energy consump­tion.

Mitigation:  Aside from the end-users’ benefits, there may be societal and environ­mental benefits to these reduc­tions and peak-shaving actions, where climate-change mitiga­tion starts from measuring one’s impact in order to begin making those changes—whether manually or by automa­tion. Enough collec­tive shifting of use from peak hours of the day may enable a utility to avoid the use of diesel generators to make up the difference.  That may reduce costs for the utility and reduce charges to the end users—all while benefiting the environ­ment.

What Are the Benefits of Green Button CMD to Utilities and Their Customers?

Take a look at our Green Button Connect My Data cut-sheet (two pages) to learn more about the benefits of Green Button CMD to utilities and utility customers…

Applications, or “apps,” are available from multiple vendors to help homeowners, renters, business owners, and others reach their goals—whether the goal is to install solar, go “net-zero,” shave peak costs in regions with time-of-use pricing, reduce environmental footprints, or simply to understand how one property in a portfolio compares to another. 

There are many companies providing apps.  
Look to the Green Button Alliance membership for solutions.

The GBA is also part of the U.S. DOE’s DataGuard program for responsible energy-data handling.  Read our press release, here: