NAESB Update - February 2026

NAESB Bulletin

NAESB Bulletin: November – February 2026 (Volume 18, Issue 3) [.pdf]

Excerpt related to Green Button and ESPI —

Green Button/Energy Services Provider Interface (ESPI):

On January 29, 2026, the ESPI Task Force approved a recommendation to revise the NAESB REQ.21 ESPI Model Business Practices to remove the Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) as a data transport method.

The recommendation, developed in response to a Standards Request submitted by the Green Button Alliance, noted that SFTP has not been used in any known industry implementations of Green Button programs and that SFTP may be less secure than the other method supported by the standards for third parties or data custodians to obtain customer energy usage information, Representational State Transfer (REST). Because SFTP remains an option in the ESPI standard, third-party vendors are required to continue to support it despite its lack of use. Deprecating SFTP as a transport capability could reduce implementation burdens and encourage broader participation. The formal comment period for the recommendation ended on February 27, 2026.

In addition, the Green Button Alliance submitted three Requests for Minor Corrections to the NAESB REQ.21 ESPI Model Business Practices. The Requests propose revisions to establish a consistent method for indicating deprecated elements and update diagrams included in the standards. Both the recommendation and Requests for Minor Corrections are scheduled for review at the upcoming RMQ Executive Committee meeting on March 5, 2026. If approved by the RMQ Executive Committee, the changes will be included in the next publication of the RMQ Model Business Practices.

The REQ ESPI Task Force will reconvene later this year to review an additional Standards Request submitted at the end of February 2026. The request proposes updates to the REQ.21 ESPI Model Business Practices to simplify implementation through the addition of a new schema and changes to support backward compatibility.