The mitigation potential of states and regions is extremely big: The sum of all regions in the world almost add up to the global level, which makes regions fundamental for reaching net-zero globally. States and regions have been increasingly taping into this potential by significantly increasing their commitments to act on climate change in the last few years, thereby reinforcing or nudging additional national action. However, the powers regions have to act on these commitments and put forward new ones are still little understood to date. This research used the framework for ‘power to act’ which considers financial and regulatory hard powers, agenda setting and framing soft powers, and several dimensions of capacity – political alignment, funds, information, and trained staff to help understand better how and where regions could act.