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Paper short abstract

We examine how actors seek to requalify hydrogen’s “greenness” by loosening criteria and promoting color agnostic approaches. Drawing on ethnographic and document research, we trace valuation tools shaping which hydrogen futures become legible—and which are sidelined.

Paper long abstract

As the hydrogen utopia has stumbled upon challenges, industry actors, scientists, and policymakers alike have started to reorient expectations, calling out for a shift “from green dreams to reality”. In this reorientation, the qualities of hydrogen are up for renegotiation, particularly how the greenness of hydrogen is - or should - be assessed. Various industry actors advocate a more “color-agnostic” approach and call for loosening the criteria for low carbon hydrogen or incorporating blue hydrogen from natural gas, in the name of accelerating upscaling and ensuring profitability. In this paper, we inquire into such attempts to requalify the greenness of hydrogen, and the contestations that follow, asking which concerns and values are rendered (in)visible in these valuation struggles, and what hydrogen futures they enact. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with industry actors, scientists, policymakers, and NGOs, supplemented by document analysis, we trace the tools of valuation and networks of expertise mobilized in debates around the recent review of the EU’s RFNBO (Renewable Fuels of Non-Biological Origin) certification. From an STS-lens, we analyze how these tools of expertise and valuation redistribute agencies among competing visions, whether oriented toward accelerated scaling, green growth, decarbonization, or energy sufficiency. We conclude by discussing the role of such tools in rendering certain energy futures more legible than others, with implications for climate action and potentially blocked alternative pathways.