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- Convenors:
-
Kornelia Konrad
(University of Twente)
Filip Rozborski (Graz University of Technology)
Andreas Weber (University of Twente)
Senna Middelveld
Michael Kriechbaum (Graz University of Technology)
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- Format:
- Traditional Open Panel
Short Abstract:
We invite contributions that investigate present and past hydrogen futures, their context of emergence, and their performativity, just as papers that tackle hydrogen projects, policies, or look at green hydrogen production from a long-term historical, political ecological or justice lens.
Long Abstract:
The Paris Agreement to mitigate climate change requires hard-to-abate industries to transform their production practices. Hydrogen, an element that has already sparked energy visions and hype in the past, has thus seen a renaissance in recent years, in particular as large-scale, renewables-based ‘green hydrogen’. Not the least, it is often propagated as a means to mitigate emissions of the Global North, based on new production and transport systems in the Global South, as large-scale green hydrogen production requires enormous amounts of renewable energy. Whether such visions and projects, which are likely to be shaped by the specific historical context of a region, constitute opportunities for improving livelihoods in the Global South or a new form of colonialism remains a matter of debate. Furthermore, while hydrogen visions and projects are widely discussed in policy and industry circles, citizen perspectives and voices, either from the North or South, are hardly visible in the debate.
For this panel, we invite contributions that investigate present and past hydrogen futures, their context of emergence, and their performativity . We also welcome contributors that tackle specific hydrogen related projects, policies, and research and innovation activities. The panel also fosters the exploration of how a transition to green hydrogen may impact various regions and sectors. We are looking for contributions from a broad range of STS approaches, such as the fields of responsible research and innovation, socio-technical imaginaries and expectations, governance perspectives or the field of sustainability transitions. This also includes papers that look at green hydrogen production from a long-term historical, political ecological or justice lens. We particularly invite authors from Global South countries to contribute to our panel.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Claudia Cohanoff (University of the Republic) Andrea Waiter Soledad Contreras
Short abstract:
This presentation aims to contribute to the reflection on the development process of green hydrogen and its potential impacts on a peripheral country like Uruguay. To achieve this, three experiences that occurred in the last century are analyzed in order to extract lessons and recommendations.
Long abstract:
In 2018, Uruguay embarked on incorporating green hydrogen into its energy matrix to contribute to the decarbonization of the transportation sector. However, a change in government in 2020 shifted the focus towards developing a roadmap for green hydrogen, with an emphasis on exporting it to northern countries.
This presentation falls within the realm of energy studies, specifically considering the concept of energy transitions. The objective is to contribute to the reflection on the development process of green hydrogen and its potential impacts on a peripheral country like Uruguay. Three historical energy transition experiences in Uruguay are analyzed, spanning the integration of electricity in the early 20th century, the incorporation of hydroelectricity in the mid-20th century, and the integration of renewable energies in the early 21st century. The analysis revolves around four dimensions: the types of actors involved and their characteristics, the interconnectedness of these actors and their relationships, the role of scientific and technological knowledge impacting learning and unlearning processes, and the importance of science, technology, and innovation policies in addressing national problems in peripheral contexts.
Drawing lessons from these transitions, the presentation offers recommendations for the recent development of green hydrogen in Uruguay. The qualitative methodology employed includes a review of primary and secondary sources, complemented by interviews with key informants, aiming to provide valuable insights for strategic decision-making in the context of green hydrogen implementation in Uruguay.
Kornelia Konrad (University of Twente) Andreas Weber (University of Twente) Senna Middelveld
Short abstract:
Anticipated futures for green hydrogen production create new and enact old relations between the global North and South. We analyse socio-technocal futures and projects in the making, based on interviews, policy documents and media analysis.
Long abstract:
With the increasing political pressure of mitigating climate change, the chemical industry in the Global North is looking into different ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. A key technology that is anticipated to make a difference is water electrolysis powered by renewable energy, also known as ‘green hydrogen’. Since green hydrogen production is an energy intensive process, the chemical industry based in Europe and The Netherlands is looking at countries where renewable energy is cheaply available. Several locations are investigated, but many point to the Global South around the equator, and in particular to Africa due to its close proximity to Europe, the seemingly abundant availability of solar energy, and the potential to stimulate local economies and ‘development’.
In this paper we investigate and compare expectations, visions and emerging green hydrogen projects in Europe and Africa, with a focus on the Netherlands, Germany and Namibia. We consider them as socio-technical futures in the making – reflecting their in-between status of partly being discursive visions and expectations, and partly materializing in the form of agreements, roadmaps, contracts, studies, financial agreements, technologies being built, infrastructures planned etc. Methodologically, we build on a series of semi-structured interviews with different stakeholders, a review of key policy documents and media analysis in Namibia. We study and compare visions, projects and debates around them with a focus on new relationships between Global North and South actors emerging, how these are discussed locally and how the past is percolating in the envisioned futures for green hydrogen.
Tomás Ariztía (Universidad Diego Portales - Chile) Tomas Undurraga (Universidad Alberto Hurtado)
Short abstract:
This paper explores Green Hydrogen fairs as sites where the future and value a new green fuel is enacted. We examine three operations as constitutive of these sites: the creation of atmospheres of imminence, the showcasing of prototypes, and the production of renders and representations.
Long abstract:
STS studies have long been interested in exploring technology fairs as sites in which the value and future of potential technologies are orchestrated. Fairs represent "total social moments" where actors, artifacts, and imaginaries of techno futures are performed and brought into the present. Drawing on ethnographic material and archival work, this paper examines 4 Green Hydrogen fairs and world summits held in Chile since 2019. In doing so, we offer empirical and theoretical insights into how these events serve as crucial sites in which the future and value of Green Hydrogen are made actionable in the present as an object of investment and government. We examine three anticipatory practices as constitutive elements of green hydrogen fairs (Anderson, 2010). We first discuss how this site involves the delicate crafting of an atmosphere of imminence and potentiality around green hydrogen-related new technologies and resources. We second explore the central role of prototypes and demonstrations as artifacts for materializing and sensing potential green hydrogen futures. Thirdly, we explore the showcase of visual representations, renders, and maps as devices for orchestrating the economic and environmental value of Green H2. We conclude by highlighting the role of technology fairs as central sites for enacting new green resources and technologies as objects of investment and speculation in green capitalism.
Paula De Pablos Sanz (Technical University of Graz)
Short abstract:
Hydrogen development is not only conditioned by technical and geographical factors but socio-technical imaginaries play a crucial role. By comparing two distinct countries, this work reveals how imaginaries influence the development of hydrogen policy processes
Long abstract:
Hydrogen Future is a rather old vision. Nevertheless, it is currently gaining special momentum since numerous countries are developing national hydrogen strategies; mobilizing resources and narrowing down the traditionally abstract meaning around hydrogen. How hydrogen is produced is country-specific; conditioned by the availability of natural resources and geographical particularities. Nevertheless, this paper focuses on how socio-technical imaginaries (STIs) also influence the policy-making processes of hydrogen trajectories.
UK and Chile envision themselves as global hydrogen leaders. Yet, the means to achieve it differ widely. This study employed discourse analysis of hydrogen policy documents (2015-present) to study how STIs shape policy-making processes. Despite both countries are privileged with renewable sources potential, UK pursue blue and green hydrogen while Chile only green. UK approach has been heavily criticized, pointing to the oil and gas industry interests in natural gas and using blue hydrogen for this purpose. The Chilean strategy envision hydrogen as an opportunity to modernize the country, become a relevant geopolitical actor, and pursue societal justice concerns.
Current findings of this study suggest that decarbonizing concerns are not the main drivers for developing hydrogen futures in neither country. On the contrary, hydrogen serves as the legitimate pathway to achieve different national goals. UK endeavours to maintain the oil and gas industry while Chile is imaging a modern and robust country. The exploration of STIs in both counties contributes to elucidate Global North and Global South dynamics in transitions, and it may also contribute to understand how hydrogen could help social justice concerns.
Jorrit Smit (Universiteit Leiden Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
Long abstract:
Many transnational policy scenario’s leave no doubt: hydrogen will be a key energy technology for all net-zero scenarios of society. Critics do have doubts, in moderate terms about the use of hydrogen as ‘swiss knife’ to decarbonize all sectors, or in more fundamental terms about efficiency, material use and available renewable capacity. The hype, however, is real enough for the European Union to invest billions of public funding into hydrogen research and innovation as part of its green growth agenda: decarbonize society, save the climate and expand the economy. In this presentation, we ask through what mechanisms the political economic logic of green capitalism is shaping, and has shaped, public research agendas in chemistry. Ultimately, we explore alternative directions for hydrogen R&D based on heterodox economic thought, like degrowth.
First of all, based on an interview study with mid-career chemistry researchers at Dutch and Belgian public universities, we unpack how dominant expectations about future hydrogen costs and system integration shape to a significant extent the research agenda of academic science. Secondly, we explore histories and the construction of this techno-economic expertise, and situate this way of knowing in powerful socio-political institutions and networks. Lastly, we turn, briefly, to signs of alternative hydrogen futures in the current chemistry literature, by following a degrowth-informed technology assessment framework.
In line with the panel’s title, we thus explore not only the techno-economics of present hydrogen research, but also the politics of past expectations and the possible heterodox futures for hydrogen.
Xueyi Meng (The University of Edinburgh)
Long abstract:
This paper explores the branding of hydrogen technologies in Beijing, the first demonstration city cluster in China. While existing communication studies have primarily focused on the public understanding of hydrogen and its related innovations, this niche technology is still in its infancy, with the public exhibiting neutral attitudes or low awareness towards it. This paper, however, evaluates how the government and industry shape the public profile of hydrogen technologies within a broader civil society, aiming to avoid repeating the negative image associated with clean energy disasters like nuclear power. From exhibiting hydrogen vehicles at the Olympics to implementing supportive policies for the innovation and development of this alternative energy technology, Beijing leads the hydrogen industry in China with ambitions to dominate the global competition in hydrogen markets. Focusing on the hydrogen industry in Beijing, this paper employs document analysis of hydrogen policies and media coverage available to the public, complemented by interviews with hydrogen professionals. It aims to investigate how hydrogen is communicated to society by the technological communities, exploring the channels, the target audience, the prioritised thematic arguments, and the willingness of these gatekeepers to engage broader citizens in their discussions. The research takes STS lenses, including the diffusion of innovations, energy justice, and science communication, to supplement traditional strategic communication and brand concept analysis of technology businesses. It also provides non-western case studies from China for science and technology studies, tracing the path of the world's largest carbon emitter toward net zero goals.
Mael Goumri (Université Paris Dauphine)
Long abstract:
"Green" hydrogen is a strategic priority for the French government if it is to achieve its 2050 carbon neutrality targets. The objectives assigned to it today represent a bold promise: to decarbonize entire sectors of the economy then considered among the most difficult to green (aviation, steelworks, road haulage, etc.). But its development is often presented as an opportunity to relocalize energy production and to contribute to French energy sovereignty thanks new networks and industrial ecosystems. This talk will assess these promises while showing how this technoscientific promise (Joly, 2015) relies on networks of material flows (Quet 2022) that remain invisibilized and depoliticized. The first level of embedding is the complexity of the network of players involved in the projects. It involves energy suppliers and industrial consumers with very different cultures and practices. A second level involves the flow of materials between Global South and Global North countries, which is invisible in the presentation of the projects but still necessary. The analysis of these flows shows large discrepencies in the manners of thinking and designing the durability of hydrogen projects in France.
This talk relies on a study of strategic documents and on two recents and very different case studies : Saint-Brieuc and Saint-Nazaire.
Jordan Carlson (Kyoto University) Gregory Trencher
Long abstract:
Since 2018, dozens of countries have released national hydrogen strategies designed to guide the development of low-carbon hydrogen sectors as part of nationwide efforts to decarbonise their economies. Yet hydrogen is already a widely-used chemical feedstock, and more than 95% of all hydrogen in 2024 is produced from unabated fossil fuels. Attempting to use hydrogen to decarbonise other sectors when hydrogen production itself is carbon intensive presents significant risks to achieving national decarbonisation goals under international climate agreements. We approach these decarbonisation risks using a framework based on the IPCC’s dimensions of feasibility for climate solutions, considering risks emerging from seven categories: geophysical, environmental-ecological, technological, economic, socio-cultural, institutional, and geopolitical. We use this framework to consider the strategic risks to national decarbonisation goals emerging from national hydrogen strategies in four nation-states proposing different configurations of international hydrogen economies. Specifically, we consider two states that plan to be net importers of hydrogen produced overseas and shipped to their ports (Japan and Germany), and two that plan to be net exporters meeting the global demand represented by the former (Australia and the United States). Using document analysis, we review the hydrogen strategies of each country to identify decarbonisation risks that might threaten the viability or long-term stability of emissions reductions. Applying a holistic framework allows us to identify potential interlinkages and reinforcing loops of risk that may derail or delay emissions reduction progress in both hydrogen producing and importing states.
Filip Rozborski (Graz University of Technology)
Short abstract:
This study examines the impact of the sociotechnical imaginary of Germany as industrial hub in policies on hydrogen technologies, exploring its embedment in history and present societal structures. We show how this imaginary influenced the hydrogen visions over time, resulting in unsustainabilities.
Long abstract:
Counteracting climate change is one of the major challenges modern societies are confronted with. In this context, the hydrogen vision emerged as a promising solution for achieving a net-zero transformation across various sectors. Having been shaped by diverse dynamics and influenced by prevailing sociotechnical imaginaries, it stabilizes currently in multiple countries as an influential and socially performative vision.
This study conducts discourse analysis of policy documents (2006-2020) and investigates intricate ways in which the allocation of resources to the hydrogen field has been influenced by the sociotechnical imaginary of Germany as industrial hub, i.e., the conviction that the past and future of German society are tight to industrial production. This research also involves analysis of its historical forms and manifestations in the present material and institutional structures.
Our research indicates that since the formation of the German national state, an industrial consciousness has been inscribed in the social consciousness of the German society and has not diminished despite changes in economic structures. The industrial imaginary is also manifested in narratives legitimizing investments in hydrogen technologies and in the distribution of financial resources that have prioritized support of hydrogen end-use technologies within historically established industry sectors over the years, rather than supporting hydrogen generation technologies.
Given the current underdevelopment of low-carbon hydrogen generation technologies, pivotal for the hydrogen value chain’s climate impact, we discuss to what extent the imaginary of Germany as industrial hub has led to “unsustainabilities” (Markard et al., 2023) in the shape of the hydrogen vision over time.
Nick Hacking (Cardiff University) Peter Pearson (Imperial College London) Malcolm Eames (Cardiff University)
Long abstract:
This paper combines insights from key researchers in the Sociology of Expectations (SoE) and the Technological Innovation Systems (TIS) analytical approaches to re-evaluate 65 years of hydrogen fuel cell (HFC) innovation in Germany. Over the long course of branching developments in the global HFC TIS, the development of niche applications in Germany – in HFC mobility, stationary fuel storage and in the military – are shown to have moved into mainstream energy and industrial policy opportunities chiefly in the last decade. The focus here on developments in HFC mobility, in particular, unpacks why there has been such uneven prospects for HFC innovation over time and in space as one looks at the governance of sustainable energy policy within and between the global HFC TIS and innovation in particular German federal regions (the Länder). This study also asks why the prospects for certain applications within a potential hydrogen economy, which are advocated by other European countries with apparent pro-HFC policies, such as the United Kingdom (where HFC innovation started), still seem to have so much less tangible activity on the ground thanks to a number of industrial-academic clusters in particular Länder.
Johannes Hollenhorst (London School of Economics and Political Science)
Long abstract:
Electrolytic politics emerged in Aberdeen due to the political will to bring green hydrogen technology to a city that remains until today deeply engrained in the UK oil and gas industry. Crucially, the politics of Aberdeen City Council were thereby not yet driven by the considerations of net zero or the economics of green growth which became the driving force for hydrogen infrastructure deployment from 2019 onwards. Rather, the Council was trying to make a difference to the unfolding of Aberdeen's energy future in a highly pragmatic and at the same time in a highly experimental way to position the city as an energy city beyond oil and gas. At the time the council started to invest time and resources into winning funding from the Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking (FCH JU) for the first hydrogen projects in the early 2010s, it was still highly uncertain whether hydrogen would ever become acknowledged as a crucial energy technology. And yet, its actions created a speculative discoursive, and material basis that would allow local companies to eventually build on, once oil and gas extraction would no longer support the livelihoods of the tens of thousands of people who were still employed by the industry at the time. Positioning itself strategically side-by-side with the oil and gas industry's interest in blue rather than electrolytic, green hydrogen, it however also facilitated the exploitation of the local hydrogen story and practical experience by players largely interested in extending the hydrocarbon past into the future.
Luisa Stuhr (Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg) Melanie Jaeger-Erben (Brandenburg University of Technology)
Long abstract:
Within the energy transition, the heat transition remains one of the biggest challenges. In Germany, heat supply accounts for more than 50 percent of total final energy consumption and is responsible for a large proportion of CO2 emissions. Lately, the use of (green) hydrogen technologies has been widely discussed as a key solution for the future energy transition. However, the limits of producing and using hydrogen for sustainable housing has been the subject of much controversy. As a pioneering policy instrument based on local conditions, municipal heating plans are intended to identify the best and most cost-efficient way to achieve a climate-friendly and progressive heat supply locally. Thus, the future of hydrogen for the heat transition will be shaped by municipal heating plans that are to be drawn up in the next years.
This case study focuses on one of the biggest coal regions of Germany, Lusatia. In this area hydrogen infrastructure projects are currently being massively promoted and built. However, the transformation from coal to renewable infrastructures is accompanied by multiple conflicts. My research aims to identify the contradictions and conflict dynamics of current hydrogen plans in the heating sector in the context of local transformation conflicts. How are hydrogen futures currently negotiated in the heating plans of municipalities and which transformation ideas are implicitly or explicitly invoked? How does the identity of the past and future energy region impact the local transition to green hydrogen? I will present first results from interviews with municipal decision-makers.