The Green Button initiative is an industry-led effort that responds to a White House call-to-action to provide utility customers with easy and secure access to their energy usage information in a consumer-friendly and computer-friendly format. Customers are able to securely download their own detailed energy usage with a simple click of a literal “Green Button” on electric utilities’ websites.

Green Button is based on the Energy Services Provider Interface (ESPI) data standard released by the North American Energy Standards Board (NAESB) in the fall of 2011. The data standards development process was facilitated by the Smart Grid Interoperability Panel, a public private partnership that is facilitated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
The ESPI standard consists of two components: 1) a common XML format for energy usage information and 2) a data exchange protocol which allows for the automatic transfer of data from a utility to a third party based on customer authorization. All of the utilities that have committed to Green Button will implement the common XML data format in an easy to download manner.