Green Button Alliance to Drive Adoption of the Green Button Standard

The Green Button Alliance (GBA), a non-profit, 501(c)(3) corporation, today announced it has been formed to advance the Green Button initiative, and will facilitate standards-based application development, administer certification and testing programs, and create awareness among consumers to accelerate adoption of the Green Button standard. Founding members of the Green Button Alliance include London Hydro, Schneider Electric, UL, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the UCA International Users Group (UCAIug). Building upon existing Green Button initiatives, the Green Button Alliance will unite industry thought leaders in order to more-rapidly deliver the benefits of standardized Green Button technologies to consumers.

The White House-inspired Green Button initiative was created in 2011 with the support of NIST, DOE, and the Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP). Today, approximately 60 million energy customers with smart meters have access to their own energy data in a standardized format. The Green Button Alliance is committed to providing customers with easy, standardized access to their energy information (electricity, gas and water usage data), which will ultimately enable them to identify ways to better manage their utility consumption to save money and resources. Green Button Alliance membership is open to electric, gas and water utilities, hardware and software providers, government agencies, technology integrators and other industry stakeholders.

“The Green Button Alliance will take a leadership role in educating the industry, and will create a rich ecosystem of certified third-party applications that greatly benefit residential, commercial and industrial customers,” said Barry Haaser, executive director of the Green Button Alliance. “We encourage those vendors with Green Button implementations, and the utilities adopting it, to join other industry stakeholders in this ground-breaking industry initiative as we work together to transform the way we use utility information.”

“As the Global Specialist in Energy Management™, Schneider Electric is committed to driving energy innovation and efficiency using open standards,” said Greg Thompson, general manager of Utility DSM Solutions, Schneider Electric. “We believe that the Green Button standard is a tremendous opportunity for our customers, from utilities to end-users, to realize the maximum benefit of our solutions and achieve their goals. We offer Green Button support across many of our applications, including our Connect My Data utility implementations, enterprise, buildings, and consumer solutions. We are proud to be a founding member of the Green Button Alliance and its contributions to creating a more sustainable planet for all.”

"As a founding member of the Green Button Alliance, London Hydro continues to underscore its commitment to increase adoption of Green Button across Ontario-based and Canadian utilities," said Syed Mir, vice president of corporate services and CIO. "We have been working with Ontario Ministry of Energy, MaRS Discovery District, and third-party application vendors to demonstrate the value of Green Button Connect My Data. Our solution leverages the OpenESPI open source reference implementation standard and cloud computing to enable our residential customers to shift high-peak usage, and our commercial customers, such as school boards, to manage energy consumption across multiple facilities and utilities."

The Green Button Alliance will facilitate the development of standards-based applications that will drive the wide-spread industry adoption of the Green Button Download My Data and Connect My Data standards. By using Green Button Connect My Data, customers can securely provide authorized third-party service providers with their electric usage information to enable them to make informed decisions about their energy consumption.

In addition, due to the use of common Green Button technology, third-party developers are able to more-rapidly create and offer products, services and applications that leverage Green Button data to help consumers better understand, manage and streamline their energy use. Green Button standards are based on the North American Energy Standards Board (NAESB) Energy Services Provider Interface (ESPI) standard.