Regulatory Assistance Project (RAP), India: Grantee Spotlight (Q2 2026)

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Grantee spotlight: Regulatory Assistance Project (RAP), India 

The Giving Green Fund plans to award a grant to the India program of Regulatory Assistance Project for subnational support on regulatory reform, wholesale market design, demand-side flexibility, and institutional capacity building to enable power sector decarbonization in India. RAP is a global nonprofit that provides technical assistance and policy support to regulators, utilities, and policymakers to advance clean energy transitions.

RAP’s work falls within our philanthropic strategy of supporting a clean energy transition in LMICs and, more specifically, our sub-strategy to accelerate power sector decarbonization in India. Please see Giving Green’s strategy report for more information, including potential risks and co-benefits, recommended sub-strategies, theory of change, funding need, and key uncertainties.

Last updated: May 2026 

What Is RAP?

RAP, founded in 1992, is dedicated to accelerating the transition to a clean, reliable, and efficient energy system through regulatory and policy reform. It operates across the United States, the European Union, China, India, and Southeast Asia, with a focus on power sector governance, market design, and clean energy integration.

RAP's primary approach is sustained, trusted engagement with decision-makers. It provides regulatory guidance, co-designs policy frameworks, runs pilot programs, and facilitates knowledge exchange between international and local contexts, translating global best practices into context-specific regulatory solutions. RAP's core expertise spans wholesale electricity market design, demand-side flexibility, distributed energy resources, energy efficiency, and utility and regulatory capacity building — capabilities that position it to engage at the highest-leverage points in power sector reform.

What Are We Funding, and How Could It Help Address Climate Change?

As part of our focus on strengthening grid infrastructure and accelerating subnational energy transition in India, we are funding RAP to advance regulatory and institutional reforms through four key activities:

• Wholesale market reform: Supporting modern market mechanisms for large-scale renewable integration enabled by knowledge sharing and pilot demonstration.  
• Demand-side flexibility: Advancing regulatory frameworks and pilots that recognize demand response and distributed energy resources as reliable system assets.
• Distributed energy resources: Scaling energy efficiency and distributed energy solutions, including evidence generation pilots for community solar models.
• Future-ready utilities and regulators: Building DISCOM and regulatory capacity by equipping institutions with tools, advisory support, and mechanisms to manage increasingly complex power sector planning, transactions, and system operations.

By modernizing market design and building institutional capacity to implement it, this work directly addresses the regulatory barriers that slow clean energy deployment. Over the longer term, stronger market signals and better-equipped regulators and utilities will enable accelerated renewable integration while maintaining grid reliability.

Why Do We Think RAP Will Use This Funding Well?

In India, RAP has built strong relationships across the institutional landscape. In the past, RAP has co-developed a renewable electricity roadmap with NITI Aayog (the Government of India’s policy think tank), Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), and Shakti Sustainable Energy Foundation (SSEF), provided state-specific analysis of electricity reforms across 15 states, and delivered consistent technical inputs to national and state consultations on market design, demand flexibility, resource adequacy, and renewable integration. 

It has also established strategic partnerships with the All India DISCOMs Association (AIDA) and the Independent Power Producers Association of India, enabling engagement with regulators, utilities, and market participants at scale. RAP’s ongoing pilots with AIDA and four DISCOMs reflect the depth of RAP’s institutional relationships and engagements at the subnational level, complemented by credible experience implementing pilot demonstrations of demand response and grid-interactive rooftop solar models in Odisha.

Philanthropic funding for regulatory reform and market design in India's power sector remains limited, despite its outsized leverage. Our analysis of India’s power sector highlights that structural barriers at the regulatory and institutional level are among the key constraints to clean energy deployment at scale. We believe RAP's global technical expertise, longstanding stakeholder relationships, and proven ability to translate analysis into regulatory action make it well-positioned to drive meaningful progress on India's energy transition.

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Giving Green believes that additional climate donations are likely to be most impactful when directed to our Top Climate Nonprofits. For several reasons, we may choose to recommend grants to other organizations for work that we believe is at least as impactful as grants to our top recommendations. We are highlighting this grant to offer transparency to donors to the Giving Green Fund, as well as to provide a resource for donors who are particularly interested in this impact strategy. This is a nonpartisan analysis (study or research) and is provided for educational purposes.

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