Green Button

Green Button can help you easily access and securely transfer your energy usage data to better understand it.
two people reading a tablet

Green Button is a standardized data format that gives residential and business energy customers an option to easily access and securely transfer their energy usage data. Green Button data can help you make more informed choices about your energy use, switching electricity price plans or making efficiency investments to your home or business.

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How Green Button works

Green Button allows you to download your natural gas and electricity usage data (energy data) and account holder information from your utility, and authorize the secure, automatic transfer of this data to a third-party’s Green Button application of your choice.

Here's how it works:

  • Meters capture your energy data which is collected by your utility.
  • Your utility converts the data into the Green Button format. From here you can:
     
    • DOWNLOAD my data
      • Download your energy data from your utility and use it for your own purposes, OR
    • CONNECT my data
      • Choose a third-party application that uses the Green Button format
      • Give your utility permission to securely transfer your energy data to the application
      • The application provides you with information and analysis based on your energy data

green button infographic

By November 1, 2023, rate-regulated electricity and natural gas utilities in Ontario must provide customers with access to their energy usage data in Green Button format. While most utilities are still working to implement, some utilities already offer Green Button. See the list below or contact your utility directly for more information.

What Green Button can do for you

Green Button can help you:

  • Better understand your energy usage
  • Choose which electricity price plan works best for your home or business
  • Track and analyze your energy use so that you can conserve or shift your usage
  • Make decisions about energy efficiency upgrades

What you need to know

The choice is yours.

As a utility customer, you have access to your own energy data and account information. When offered by your utility (see the list below), you can use Green Button to download or securely transfer your energy data to a third-party’s Green Button application of your choice.  

To transfer your data to a third-party’s Green Button application, you must first authenticate yourself as the account holder before authorizing your utility to securely share your data. 

Once authorization is complete, the third-party’s Green Button application will continue to have ongoing access to your energy data, but you can revoke your authorization at any time by contacting your utility. 

It is your responsibility to make sure that you understand and accept the terms and conditions that you have agreed to in transferring your energy data to the third-party’s Green Button application, including:

  1. How they will protect your privacy and confidentiality
  2. What they can do with your energy data
  3. Whether they can share your energy data with anyone else and under what circumstances
  4. How long they will keep your energy data
  5. How they will destroy your energy data when they no longer need it or if you ask them to

Only give access to your energy data to third-party Green Button applications that you trust.

If you have any questions about what a third-party’s Green Button application will do with your energy data, be sure to ask them before authorizing your utility to transfer your energy data.

Ontario utilities ready for Green Button

The OEB has been monitoring the progress of utilities to make sure they are ready to implement by November 1, 2023. As of February 28, 2023, the following utilities are ready to offer Green Button to their customers:

  • E.L.K. Energy Inc.
  • ERTH Power Corporation
  • London Hydro Inc.
  • Newmarket-Tay Power Distribution Ltd.

NOTE: This list is based on implementation reporting by utilities to the OEB and is being updated as more utilities are ready to offer Green Button. 

Check here regularly for updates.

Have questions?

Contact us or your utility.