One Small Button for Man, One Giant Leap for Data Access

Jason Hartke
Vice President, National Policy
U.S. Green Building Council

Today the White House launched the Green Button Initiative, which connects more than 15 million Americans with their utility providers for streamlined access to their energy data. Nine utilities and electricity suppliers initially signed up for this landmark program designed to enable consumers to put their energy consumption into their own hands.
Green Button, elegant in its simplicity, is ultimately about empowering millions of Americans with easy access to the foundational information they need to take action and reduce their energy consumption.

Green Button will create new opportunities to advance green building and provide a valuable, new tool for practitioners. Widespread access to energy use information will help homeowners and commercial property managers understand their electrical energy consumption and create the starting point for concrete steps to reduce wasted energy, save money, improve performance and ultimately create buildings that are better for people and the environment.

As the old adage goes, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.” Without baseline energy data, home and building owners are unable to benchmark for energy improvements. This data will invariably drive the action we want to make significant reductions in energy use.

Tools for Tracking Building Performance on College Campuses

Kal Wellman
Associate, LEED
U.S. Green Building Council

Increasing utility costs and tightening budgets have led many colleges and universities across the country to rethink the way they manage their energy consumption. Take Western Michigan University for example: Their facilities team has installed 718 sub-meters across 151 campus buildings, allowing the team to closely measure, track and analyze their energy and water consumption on a building-by-building basis. They even went a step further and created an online dashboard which displays this data to the public for added transparency. Pretty impressive, to say the least.

For a number of reasons, not all higher education institutions have the capacity to install sub-meters on campus buildings. The majority of institutions use one or two central meters to track total campus energy and water consumption. However, it doesn’t matter whether your energy management strategy involves tracking performance data at the building level or at the campus level. There are a number of free online tools available to help you along the way. Check out the tools below to get started.