How to Promote Smarter Water Use by Giving Consumers Access to Their Consumption Data

Most consumers do not know how much water they use on a daily basis or how their water consumption compares to that of others because they receive little information on their utility bills. As a result, consumers receive minimal feedback on how changes in their behaviors, household appliances, or plumbing impact their consumption. By providing consumers access to their water usage data, data-driven insights can enable utilities and consumers to manage water use better, identify leaks sooner, and discover opportunities to use water more efficiently. This report argues that federal and local governments should work together to push utilities into making water data available to consumers using the Green Button standard; the Green Button initiative, adopted principally by electric and gas utilities, created a standard for reporting and exchanging utility usage data among providers, third-party developers, and consumers.