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HOUSTON — CERAWeek has long been among the biggest business jamborees for the energy industry, with thousands of corporate executives, policy makers and industry analysts from all over the world pouring into a massive convention center downtown to attend speeches, talk shop and forecast the year ahead.

As the event gets underway today, anticipation is running higher than normal because of the head-spinning changes in Washington as President Donald Trump’s administration puts its mark on United States energy policy.

The impact of those policies is global and likely long-lasting. That’s why much of the conference will be devoted to parsing exactly what those new directives will be and how they will impact global energy markets that are in historic flux.

Cipher will be reporting from Houston all week. Here are five things we’ll be focused on:

1. Energy demand.

After several decades of sluggish energy-consumption growth, forecasts now predict a strong and steady increase over the coming decades, particularly for electricity.

This increased demand will be driven by rapidly advancing progress in artificial intelligence and digitalization, both of which will require a massive expansion of energy-intensive data centers. The switch from traditional combustion engine vehicles to electric ones — proceeding rapidly in some regions, such as China, and more slowly in others, such as the U.S. — is also changing the landscape, undercutting demand for oil while boosting consumption of electricity.

Still, many questions remain about just how much additional energy — especially electricity — will be needed and how fast governments and businesses should be moving to fill those needs.

2. Fossil fuels vs. clean energy.

Which sources of energy, and what pathways for delivering it, make the most sense to meet that urgent demand? The Trump administration unapologetically leans toward fossil fuels — a stark contrast to the administration of former president Joseph R. Biden, which was more focused on clean energy and climate concerns. The shift has left leaders in the fossil fuel industry elated and created expectations for a huge resurgence in oil and gas production, especially in the U.S.

Yet there are plenty of reasons why oil and gas may not meet all those expectations. Profitability and fiscal “discipline” are watchwords these days in the oil and gas industry, after it torched hundreds of billions of dollars of investor money during the oil boom between 2010 and 2018. Many will be watching to see whether that discipline — basically a reluctance to boost production — is showing signs of waning in anticipation of more favorable treatment under Trump policies.

Speeches by the new Energy Department secretary Chris Wright (recently the CEO of oil services company Liberty Energy) and Interior Department secretary Doug Burgum (former governor of North Dakota) will be parsed particularly closely, along with those of top oil and gas CEOs.

3. Permitting.

Addressing growing energy needs often means building new physical infrastructure, from pipelines to carry oil and gas to transmission lines that distribute electricity. These projects are often controversial because they’re large and must traverse communities and natural landscapes.

Politicians and industry officials across political parties agree that regulatory strictures need to be loosened, but disputes over just how to do that and what technologies to favor have delayed change. Both renewable and fossil fuel industry officials will have fingers in the air to try to discern how the incoming Trump administration, which has called for a major build-out of new infrastructure on both the gas and electricity fronts, will deal with this tension.

4. The fate of the IRA.

Clean energy folks and fossil fuel officials alike will be watching how exactly the new administration treats the Biden administration’s signature climate initiative, the Inflation Reduction Act, which Trump has disparaged as the “green new scam.” Despite the president’s disdain, most of the subsidies in the initiative support projects in Republican dominated states, including Ohio, Georgia, Texas, Louisiana and North Dakota.

CERAWeek is one of the first major forums where Secretaries Wright and Burgum could provide hints about how deeply the administration will pressure Congress to cut IRA subsidies and in what areas. In the meantime, Trump-ordered funding freezes across the federal government — including for IRA initiatives — may also be a top topic at the confab.

5. Tariffs and trade.

Industry officials are trying to gauge the impact of Trump administration trade policies on energy markets. Tariffs on Canadian oil imports and Chinese solar panels and batteries will likely push up energy prices, potentially undercutting President Trump’s promise to lower them. China, which many in the gas industry have been betting will be a big buyer of liquified natural gas in the future, has targeted U.S. LNG for retaliation and is rapidly stepping up shipments of Chinese-made solar panels and electric cars to markets such as Europe and Asia, where they will compete with U.S.-made products.

At CERAWeek, industry officials, including the CEOs of Chevron, TotalEnergies, Shell and BP, and government representatives from around the world will try to come to grips with where the Trump administration’s policies are taking some of the world’s biggest commodity markets.