As AI adoption accelerates and data center development expands across the country the conversation around infrastructure increasingly comes back to one central issue: power, but access to power is not simply an engineering or development challenge, its also deeply tied to the regulatory framework that govern wholesale electricity markets, transmission systems, energy trading, reliability requirements, and market operations.

The scale and speed of projected data center growth are creating new pressures across the energy ecosystem, raising important questions about how existing regulatory structures will adapt to rapidly evolving demand.

In this episode, Vinson & Elkins' Chief Innovation Officer Aubrey Bishai is joined by Energy Regulation Partner C.J. Polito to discuss the federal regulatory landscape surrounding energy markets and what it means for companies developing, financing, and operating AI-driven infrastructure

They explore how regulators are thinking about reliability, market design, power transactions, interconnection challenges, and wholesale energy markets as demand from data centers continues to grow. They also discuss how developers, investors, and infrastructure companies should think about regulatory risk, compliance, and long-term market dynamic as the conversions of AI, energy, and infrastructure continues to reshape the industry.