The need for tran­si­tion­ing towards low-car­bon ener­gy sys­tems, and the recent boom in avail­able data, allows for a con­stant re-eval­u­a­tion of glob­al elec­tric­i­ty sec­tor decar­boniza­tion progress, and its under­ly­ing the­o­ret­i­cal assump­tions. Arguably, the exist­ing decar­boniza­tion lit­er­a­ture and insti­tu­tion­al sup­port frame­works focus on top-down sup­ply side mech­a­nisms, where poli­cies, goals, access to financ­ing, and tech­nol­o­gy inno­va­tion are sug­gest­ed as the main dri­vers. Here, we syn­the­size eleven glob­al datasets that range from elec­tric­i­ty decar­boniza­tion progress, to qual­i­ty of gov­er­nance, to inter­na­tion­al fos­sil fuel sub­si­dies, and envi­ron­men­tal poli­cies, among sev­er­al oth­ers, and use meth­ods from data min­ing to explore the fac­tors that may be fos­ter­ing or hin­der­ing decar­boniza­tion progress. This exer­cise allows us to present numer­ous hypothe­ses worth explor­ing in future research. Some of these hypothe­ses sug­gest that poli­cies might be inef­fec­tive when mis­aligned with coun­try spe­cif­ic moti­va­tors and inher­ent char­ac­ter­is­tics, that even in the absence of pol­i­cy there are par­tic­u­lar inher­ent char­ac­ter­is­tics that fos­ter decar­boniza­tion progress (e.g., rel­a­tive­ly high local ener­gy prices, for­eign ener­gy import depen­den­cy and the absence of a large extrac­tive resource base), and that the inter­ac­tion ofcoun­try-spe­cif­ic enabling envi­ron­ments, inher­ent char­ac­ter­is­tics, and moti­va­tions is what deter­mines decar­boniza­tion progress, rather than stand-alone sup­port mech­a­nisms. We present the hypoth­e­sis that existin gsup­port mech­a­nisms for decar­boniza­tion may be rely­ing too much on blan­ket strate­gies (e.g., poli­cies, targets),and that there is a need for sup­port mech­a­nisms that encom­pass a wider diver­si­ty of coun­try-spe­cif­ic under­ly­ing conditions.