Electricity systems today are undergoing structural change at a speed that current regulatory frameworks are unable to accommodate. Against this fast-transforming background, energy regulators are expected to enable new technologies and market structures, to support investment on an unprecedented scale, and to do so while safeguarding affordability, resilience and security of supply.
Regulators’ capacity to achieve these aims depends on the strength and coherence of the institutional framework within which they must operate: a clear mandate, sound governance and independence, the support of government and sister agencies, qualified staff, effective decision-making processes, financial stability, up-to-date regulatory instruments and reliable data are all essential elements to have in place.
The Clean Energy Ministerial Campaign on Empowering Regulators for Accelerated Decarbonisation rests on the premise that a substantial part of the existing gap between decarbonisation commitments and their delivery is due to the institutions responsible for translating those commitments into licences, tariffs, codes and approvals.
The Campaign’s 2025 brief, Pathways for Empowering Regulators to Advance Decarbonisation, sets out six steps through which governments can close this gap. The second of these is diagnostic and poses three key questions: which institutions hold jurisdiction over regulation related to decarbonisation; whether the regulator has the statutory support required to carry out the tasks assigned to it; and whether it has the capacity to take those tasks on.
This brief focuses on that second diagnostic step, and reports on how it is being applied in real-world contexts. It does this through the lens of the Regulatory Institutional Energy Transition Health Check, which has been developed by RAP in collaboration with the Regulatory Energy Transition Accelerator (RETA) and the Campaign.
The health check is a voluntary review of whether a regulator has the mandate and the institutional capacity required to deliver its responsibilities, and focuses on institutional readiness rather than regulatory outcomes. Its outputs are intended for the regulator’s internal use, and it is neither a ranking nor a compliance audit.
A structured diagnosis makes institutional gaps visible before they become barriers to implementation, and reveals the actions that a regulator can take in response. Governments and regulators that wish to begin this process are encouraged to engage with RAP and other partners, and to use the health check as a first step to identify priorities and build on the experience of others. As electricity becomes more central to economies, the ability of regulators to take timely, evidence-based and forward-looking decisions will largely determine whether investment and innovation result in power systems that are affordable, reliable, resilient and increasingly clean.
