Regulatory Assistance Project: Grantee Spotlight (Q3 2026)

The Giving Green Fund is awarding a restricted grant to the Regulatory Assistance Project (RAP) for its Energy Systems Innovation (ESI) program, which delivers technical assistance to energy regulators and utilities across Latin America, Southern Africa, and Southeast Asia. This award complements an earlier restricted grant we made to RAP’s India program, which supports subnational regulatory reform, wholesale market design, demand-side flexibility, and institutional capacity building to advance 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 two philanthropic strategies: decarbonizing India's power sector and derisking clean electricity investments in LMICs. Please see Giving Green’s strategy reports for more information, including potential risks and co-benefits, recommended sub-strategies, theory of change, funding need, and key uncertainties.

Last updated: October 2026

What Is the Regulatory Assistance Project?

RAP, founded in 1992, accelerates the transition to a clean, reliable, and efficient energy system through regulatory and policy reform. It operates across China, the EU, India, Latin America, Southern Africa, Southeast Asia, and the U.S., focusing 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. It works through local organizations and two regional peer networks: the Regulatory Energy Transition Accelerator (RETA) and the International Network of Energy Transition Think Tanks (INETTT). These networks connect it directly to the regulators making decisions and to the local organizations pushing for reform. RAP’s core expertise spans wholesale electricity market design, demand-side flexibility, distributed energy resources, energy efficiency, and utility and regulatory capacity building. These capabilities 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?

Strengthening India’s subnational power sector. As part of our strategy to decarbonize India’s power sector, we are funding RAP to advance regulatory and institutional reform through:

• Modernizing wholesale market mechanisms to support large-scale renewable integration, through knowledge sharing and pilot demonstrations
• Advancing demand-side flexibility, including regulatory frameworks and pilots that recognize demand response and distributed energy resources as reliable system assets
• Scaling distributed energy resources and energy efficiency, including evidence-generation pilots for community solar
• Building future-ready utility and regulator capacity, equipping institutions with tools and advisory support to manage increasingly complex power sector planning and operations

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

Expanding technical assistance across LMICs. As part of our derisking clean electricity investments in LMICs strategy, we are providing funding for RAP’s ESI program to support LMIC regulators and governments in priority geographies—including Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Mexico, and South Africa—by:

• Providing responsive technical assistance on power-sector reform, market design, system planning, and emerging clean-energy issues, including rapid-response support when external expertise can inform live decisions
• Expanding Regulatory Health Checks that assess LMIC institutional readiness and identify reform priorities
• Helping governments act on RAP’s distributed energy resource readiness assessment, which covers 14 countries, by supporting implementation and sharing international good practice
• Developing system-planning tools that help decision-makers avoid fossil-fuel lock-in and value renewable energy, flexibility, and electrification

By equipping regulators, utilities, and governments across a wider set of LMICs with the frameworks and tools to translate clean-energy ambitions into implementable reforms, RAP will help unlock clean-energy investment. This work will, in turn, support faster, more durable clean-energy deployment in LMICs, replacing fossil fuel generators and ultimately reducing emissions.

Why Do We Think the Regulatory Assistance Project Will Use This Funding Well?

In India, RAP has built strong relationships across the institutional landscape. It has co-developed a renewable electricity roadmap with NITI Aayog (the Government of India’s policy think tank), the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), and the Shakti Sustainable Energy Foundation (SSEF). It has also provided state-specific analysis of electricity reforms across 15 states, and delivered consistent technical input to national and state consultations on market design, demand flexibility, resource adequacy, and renewable integration. It has established strategic partnerships with the All India DISCOMs Association (AIDA), a national association of power distribution companies (DISCOMs), and the Independent Power Producers Association of India. Its ongoing pilots with AIDA and four DISCOMs are complemented by experience implementing demand-response and grid-interactive rooftop solar pilots in Odisha.

Beyond India, RAP has traction across the regions its ESI program will support. Examples include:

• South Africa: It has built a trusted advisory relationship with the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (NERSA), culminating in a Regulatory Health Check which it plans to expand for other regulators, such as Brazil and Georgia.
• Malaysia: It has partnered with Malaysia’s Energy Commission (Suruhanjaya Tenaga) on cross-border electricity trading and the system value of battery storage.
• Thailand: It is supporting the Provincial Electricity Authority to update operational procedures for distributed energy resource deployment and smart electric-vehicle charging, as electric vehicle (EV) sales in the country continue to grow quickly.
• Through INETTT, RAP leads distributed energy resource readiness assessments across 14 jurisdictions, laying the groundwork for follow-on government engagement.

Given RAP’s deep bench of technical experts, its longstanding relationships with regulators and utilities in these markets, and its track record of translating technical analysis into regulatory action, we believe RAP is well suited to advance clean-energy investment and grid reliability across both India and its priority ESI geographies.

We publish grant spotlights to offer transparency to Giving Green Fund donors and resources for those interested in the impact strategies each grant supports. Giving Green believes our Top Climate Nonprofits have the greatest impact potential for large, unrestricted gifts. For several reasons, we also disburse and recommend grants to other organizations surfaced through our research process for work that we believe is at least as impactful as grants to our top recommendations. 

This is a non-partisan analysis (study or research) and is provided for educational purposes.

RAP is a registered nonprofit in the U.S.