Technology and energy have always had a give-and-take relationship. On the one hand, technological advancements have led to more sustainable energy production, giving businesses an alternative to pollution-free energy use.
However, on the other hand, advancing technology requires higher energy, consuming large volumes of energy for completing operations. For example, NFT transactions, on average, are said to generate a CO2 footprint of over 100kg of CO2eq.
Given the immense potential of this new technology and the costs that come with it, we can expect regulators to be making frequent changes to regulation and make them frequently.
This places organisations in a difficult position because they are expected to adjust their business operations to meet these regulatory requirements and to do so rather efficiently.
Given these challenges, the best course of action is to take a proactive approach to regulatory change management.
Measures to take a proactive approach to regulation
Assign regulatory responsibilities
Clarifying roles and responsibilities is critical for ensuring a proactive take on regulation and managing compliance functions more efficiently.
Members of the regulatory team, along with other relevant users should be trained in their appropriate roles. Hence, when there is an update to the regulatory framework, it can help organisations respond rapidly to a new update.
This way, relevant stakeholders also know what to do when there is a massive update and make appropriate changes when needed.
Stay on top of regulatory updates
With the energy industry undergoing rapid changes with frequent regulatory updates, there needs to be a process to incorporate the latest updates.
Given that there are different regional regulators from different sources, organisations will need a solution that would allow them to rapidly assess the regulatory content that could reveal how business operations should be adjusted.
A regulatory horizon scanning solution can help organisations keep up with the latest updates from different regulatory institutions.
Establish a common regulatory taxonomy
There may be inconsistencies and gaps in the regional and local regulatory ruling, which makes it hard to complete several tasks on time. Hence organisations need to create a regulatory taxonomy.
A taxonomy collects regulatory data, including hierarchy, language, terminology, and structure, and organises them into a specific hierarchy for easy viewing.
Taxonomies make it easier to create a robust compliance framework and improve communication amongst relevant stakeholders.
Furthermore, it can help you account for the latest regulatory updates and integrate them into different business operations.
Moreover, by leveraging cloud-based solutions, you can build a machine-readable taxonomy with files that can be scanned by machines for easy reading and scanning.
Determine business impact
Regulatory updates need to be assessed to determine how would they affect business. Each business unit needs to carry out a detailed impact analysis on an update to determine how risks, procedures, training, policies, and controls are affected.
To ensure that this process remains efficient and not time-consuming, you need to establish a process where different units can conduct an analysis more efficiently.
Using an automated regulatory solution, you can optimise the process easier because the solution leverages AI and NLP to optimise the operation and better understand what each update could potentially do for each organisation.
Keeping up to date on energy regulation
With significant changes to energy regulation on the horizon, devising a process that allows you to take a proactive approach to regulatory change management so that the organisation is ready to incorporate updates into their business processes.
Given these challenges, organisations should incorporate an automated regulatory management solution that will be critical for the future.
Regulatory management solutions can optimise the regulatory management process, making it easier to incorporate the latest updates into your business process.
Moreover, it makes regulation and regulatory content more accessible to departments outside the regulatory team. This could be critical because energy regulation requires multiple business units working together.
Automated regulatory compliance solutions can make regulatory content more accessible because they can highlight relevant rules and publications amidst large volumes of regulatory content.
Furthermore, these solutions can make direct connections between regulatory updates and internal operations, making it easier to adjust operations where necessary.
Given the advantages of compliance management solutions, incorporating them into business operations could help you take a proactive approach to regulatory change management. This can help you ensure that you follow best practices and avoid compliance penalties.