Paper short abstract:

We apply to the energy from waste sector two concepts for understanding strategic technology framing: technological expectations that mobilise resources; and social representations that aid the assimilation of new ideas through anchoring onto familiar frames of reference.

Paper long abstract:

The paper combines two theoretical concepts for understanding strategic technology framing: future technological expectations mobilising resources; and social representations assimilating new ideas through anchoring onto familiar frames of reference. The combination is applied to the controversial case of thermal-treatment options for municipal solid waste (MSW), especially via gasification technology. The data are principally UK interviews with actors in the energy from waste sector and associated planning and policy documents, including a city case study.

Stakeholders' social representations are found to set the criteria for technological expectations and their demonstration requirements, whose fulfilment in turn has helped gasification to gain more favourable representations. Through a differential 'anchoring', gasification is represented as matching incineration's positive features while avoiding its negative ones. Despite their limitations, current two-stage combustion gasifiers are promoted as a crucial transition towards a truly 'advanced' form producing a clean syngas; R&D investment reinforces expectations for advancing the technology. Such interlinkages between technological expectations and social representations may have broader relevance to socio-technical change, especially where public controversy arises over the wider systemic role of an innovation trajectory.