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The Texas Legislature has been debating several bills aimed at boosting dispatchable power in ERCOT while erecting new economic and permitting barriers for renewables.

The recent tariffs imposed by the Trump administration mark a significant shift in U.S. trade policy that is expected to have a wide-ranging impact across multiple sectors, including in the energy sector.

On April 8 and 9, 2025, President Donald Trump issued five Presidential Actions (four Executive Orders and one Proclamation, collectively “Presidential Actions”) for the purposes of ensuring adequate and reliable energy generation, meeting growing energy demand, and addressing the national energy emergency declared on January 20, 2025 (EO 14156).

This update is a summary of the Energy-related Executive Orders that have been issued this week by the Administration.

Vinson & Elkins is a sponsor of the Edison Electric Institute's (EEI) 2025 Spring Legal Conference taking place in Chicago from April 9-11, 2025.

For more than twenty years, the North American Free Trade Agreement (“NAFTA”), and later, the United States‑Mexico-Canada Agreement (“USMCA”), have facilitated cross-border trade and investment among the United States, Mexico, and Canada through the elimination of virtually all financial barriers to trade.

Driven by the demand for AI-ready cloud infrastructure, the market cap for global data center construction, currently valued at more than $250 billion, is set to double in less than ten years, reaching half a trillion dollars by 2034.

After little more than a week in office, there is still plenty of speculation, but priorities of the Trump 2.0 Administration are becoming more concrete.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (“FERC” or “Commission”) Office of Enforcement (“Enforcement”) continues to focus on enforcing its duty of candor rules, with a recent action resulting in a $6.6 million civil penalty and a requirement to file at least one compliance monitoring report to settle alleged violations of 18 C.F.R. § 35.41(b) of the Commission’s regulations.

On October 17, 2024, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC” or the “Commission”) issued an Order on Remand (the “Order”) following the D.C. Circuit’s August 2022 decision in MISO Transmission Owners v. FERC, addressing FERC’s Return on Equity (“ROE”) methodology that has been in flux for over a decade.

Jeffrey Jakubiak, Energy Regulation Partner at Vinson & Elkins and Joe Zimmerman, Mayor of Sugar Land, Texas, join Jill Malandrino on Nasdaq TradeTalks to discuss the impact of AI on the U.S. electric power grid and why it has enormous potential to reshape the energy landscape.