Fred Wilson:

The Green Button is like OAuth for energy data. It is a simple standard that the utilities can implement on one side and web/mobile developers can implement on the other side. And the result is a ton of information sharing about energy consumption and in all likelihood energy savings that result from more informed consumers.

Here’s something I completely missed, but what on the face of it looks like a very good initiative indeed.

Opening up energy consumption data is one of the most important steps to bringing innovation into the energy sector. Giving data into the hands of the customer enables companies to directly work with them instead of having to negotiate with the utilities.

Details about the standardization can be found at the NIST wiki.