How to get your energy data in Ontario: a plain guide to Green Button
Ontario law now requires utilities to hand over your energy data in a standard, machine-readable form. It is called Green Button. Here is what that means in plain terms, how to get your data (or your customers' data) automatically, and what you can do with it.
Getting your own energy usage data used to mean logging into a utility portal, exporting a spreadsheet, and repeating it every month for every account. In Ontario that has changed. A provincial rule now requires utilities to hand over your usage data in a standard, machine-readable form, on your terms. The standard is called Green Button. If you have never heard of it, here is what it is and why it matters, whatever industry you are in.
What Green Button is, in plain terms
Green Button is a common format and a set of rules for getting energy usage data out of a utility. Instead of every utility having its own portal and its own export, Green Button gives you the same structured data, the same way, from any participating utility. It comes in two forms:
- Download My Data (DMD): you download your own usage as a file. Simple, but manual and one time.
- Connect My Data (CMD): you authorize a provider to receive your data directly from the utility, on an ongoing basis, until you choose to stop.
Connect My Data is the one that changes how businesses work with energy data. You grant permission once, choose how long and how often your data is shared, and it flows automatically through a secure authorization, following the national ESPI standard behind Green Button. You can revoke access at any time. No more logging in every month to export files.
Why Ontario is different: it is the law
In most places Green Button is optional. In Ontario it is mandated. Under Ontario Regulation 633/21, rate-regulated electricity and natural gas utilities were required to provide Green Button access by November 1, 2023. The mandate covers roughly 60 electricity and natural gas utilities across the province.
In practice that means whoever your Ontario electricity or gas utility is, your usage data is available through Green Button. The hard part is no longer whether the data exists. It is connecting to every utility, handling the authorizations, and turning the raw feeds into something you can actually use.
We have onboarded with the Green Button service of every Ontario utility. That means you can get your data, or your customers' data with their authorization, through one connection instead of dozens, on an ongoing basis.
Who this is for
This matters across industries, not just for energy specialists:
- Building owners and portfolio managers who need whole-building data for benchmarking, EUI and compliance such as Ontario's EWRB reporting.
- Industrial and commercial operators who want continuous consumption data to manage cost and demand.
- Energy management companies, consultants and resellers who serve many customers and need each customer's data, with authorization, in one place.
- Any organization that reports emissions and needs reliable activity data for its Scope 1 and 2 inventory.
For resellers and energy managers: get your customers' data
If you manage energy for other organizations, Connect My Data is built for you. With each customer's authorization, you can receive their utility data directly and continuously, without asking them to export files every month. We handle the connections to every Ontario utility and the authorization flow, so you get clean, ongoing data for every customer you serve, ready for analysis and reporting.
From raw data to analysis and reporting
Access is the start. Green Button gives you interval and billing data in a standard shape, but the value comes from what you do with it: benchmarking, cost analysis, demand management, emissions reporting and compliance. MartinAI takes the data, from Green Button and from bills and portals where a utility feed is not enough, validates it, and turns it into the structured record your dashboards, benchmarking and reports depend on. For more on why that last step matters, see our note on getting clean data out of utility bills.
How to get started
- Identify the accounts and utilities you need data for.
- Authorize access, for your own accounts, or collect authorizations from your customers.
- Connect once, and let the data flow on an ongoing basis.
- Put it to work: analysis, benchmarking, cost control and reporting.
Frequently asked questions
What is Green Button?
A standard for getting energy usage data out of a utility in a consistent, machine-readable format. It has two parts: Download My Data, where you download a file, and Connect My Data, where you authorize a provider to receive your data directly from the utility on an ongoing basis.
Is Green Button mandatory in Ontario?
Yes. Under Ontario Regulation 633/21, rate-regulated electricity and natural gas utilities were required to provide Green Button access by November 1, 2023, covering roughly 60 utilities across the province.
Can a provider get my data automatically?
Yes, with your authorization. Connect My Data lets you grant a provider ongoing access directly from the utility. You choose the duration and frequency, and you can revoke it at any time.
Can energy management companies get their customers' data?
Yes, with each customer's authorization. That is exactly what Connect My Data enables, and we connect to every Ontario utility so you can receive each customer's data in one place, on an ongoing basis.
Green Button and the standardized-data problem
Green Button promises interoperable energy data. In practice, ingestion is where programs stall. A look at how we normalize XML, PDFs and portals into one model.
From utility bills to a Scope 1 and 2 emissions inventory
Most of a building or company's Scope 1 and 2 emissions come straight from data already sitting on utility bills. Here is how the accounting works, what the 2026 disclosure rules ask for, and how to build the inventory from the bills you already receive.