Expertise of Expectations
The objective of the Expertise of Expectations (EoE) project is to increase our understanding of how different forms of expertise mould expectations of the future. Decisions on which types of concerns and valuations to consider in the shaping and making of expected future(s) are explored through the case of Power-to-X (PtX) technologies that rely on expertises coming together.
Scientific and public controversy are often prevalent when expected futures are being formed and contested. Controversies are therefore places where dynamics of expertise(s) can be observed to shift over time and investigated in how they are maintained and enacted by different kinds of expertise.
A new theoretical lens is forged of three strands of STS research that lets us investigate expertise, technology and market together. This new combination provides analytical tools to examine how expertise (e)valuatively charges expectations and renders expectations with agency. Not only is it relevant for valuation struggles of current design of the good energy future, but also to inform how we might go differently about coming together when forming expected future(s).
About the research project
EoE is empirically focused on PtX in Denmark
PtX holds a double promise: whilst using renewable energy to produce green hydrogen, PtX can birth green fossil fuel-based sectors and solve renewable energy’s Achilles’ heel(s) of volatility and inability to be stored. Denmark, in turn, offers an opportunity to investigate the formation of high expectations, as e.g. evidenced in the Danish “Power-to-X strategy” (KEFM 2022) approved by the EU (European Commission 2023). The empirical study is organized into three sub-projects to examine the potential role of expertise in the emergence, dynamics, and maintenance of expectations around PtX.
Network of expertise
SP(A) studies dynamics between expertise and expectations regarding PtX over time. Here, a historical study traces shifts in the emergence and reconfiguration of networks of expertise around PtX and more precisely how expectations of the ‘hydrogen economy’ have become reconfigured as the ‘PtX economy’. The focus is on critical shifts in the networks of expertise, to identify main actors and their disciplinary background, the tools employed, and their relation to different institutions. In particular, we trace the period from 1990s till now that gives a historical context for a better understanding of the backdrop of today’s expectations of PtX to constitute a ‘good’ future.
Expert work performed
SP(B) studies the expert work required to develop and maintain expectations of accelerated PtX upscaling. The performativity of tools and practices used by entrenched networks of expertise to develop and maintain expectations are investigated through interviews with Danish Energy Agency’s PtX task-force (DEA), International Energy Agency, consultancies (e.g. EA Analysis), EU-funded demonstration projects, commercial projects on Baltic Energy Island Bornholm, and funding organizations (e.g. EUDP). Ethnographic fieldwork is conducted of practitioners’ situated epistemic practices in DEA’s PtX task-force and in the demonstration projects to examine whether and how expertise and its valuation devices supports expectations for accelerating the upscaling of PtX. Through this, EoE becomes acquainted with the translation of valuations performed by entrenched networks of expertise, but also with those valuations that do not become translated into policy.
Alternative valuations
SP(C) examines how expectations and controversies over the valuation of PtX come to matter. Seeing whose expectations comes to matter for the energy future, and how this could be otherwise involves a mapping of controversies over valuation struggles of future(s). Danish media debates are traced to map controversies over the contested ‘goodness’ of the expected PtX future. This is corroborated through interviews with marginalized networks of expertise detected in the media analysis as well as in the demonstration and commercial projects conducted in SP(B) (e.g. NGOs, community groups and researchers). The knowledge of (potentially) marginalized valuations lays the foundation for a comparative analysis of: a) different degrees of agency of different networks of expertise to impact policymaking, b) the valuation devices/tools employed to charge expectations with value, and c) the degree of manifest or latent controversy it produces. This serves as a basis for two workshops to form hybrid forums with heterogeneous actors (Callon et al. 2009): The first with alternative networks of expertise is focused on formulating main concerns over PtX as the ‘solution’ to the energy transition. The second workshop with both entrenched and marginalized networks of expertise takes outset in insights from SP-B, seeking to transform the ways we look at the problem. Props such as energy scenarios featuring alternative routes for upscaling PtX and alternative metrics (e.g. energy sufficiency; Energy Return on Investment) are used to explore how and by whom valuations struggles are forged.
Theoretical perspective
A fourth SP(D) compares agencies of different networks of expertise to mobilise expectations, concerns and prescriptions. Results of the entire project are synthesized into a new theory of The Expertise of Expectations. EoE’s theoretical framework combines three strands of research in STS to create what EoE coins a perspective on agency/-ies of expertise. First, within the STS strand on expertise, we adopt the approach of networks of expertise (Eyal 2013; Eyal & Buchholz 2015; Whatmore 2009; Collins & Evans 2007). This way of attending to knowledge production entails a shift of focus away from experts to expertise, to consider not just specific persons, but also techniques, devices, and institutional and spatial arrangements (e.g. Eyal 2013; Frandsen 2023). This approach can trace how both entrenched and less established networks of expertise come into being, sometimes building on experiential knowledge (Rabeharisoa & Doganova 2021; Eyal 2013) and/or engaging in ‘citizen science’ (Irwin 1995; Frantzen et al. forthcoming, Yearley 2014). The second strand is that of translation (e.g. Callon 1984, 1986; Hood 2017; Owens 2015), which is a concept coined to trace what it takes to mobilise/translate a network of allies around a new technology or around concerns for an envisioned future, turning it into concrete manifestations (e.g. policy, demonstrations). Third, drawing on Valuation Studies (Muniesa 2011; Antal et al. 2015; Doganova & Karnøe 2015; Neyland et al. 2019; Karnøe et al. 2022), EoE takes a performativity perspective (Callon 1998; MacKenzie et al. 2007). This approach was developed originally to study how economies or markets get enacted/performed by economic models and (Callon 1998; Caliskan & Callon 2010), sometimes producing collective concerns (Frankel et al. 2019). Treating value as a verb (valuation) rather than something that ‘is’ (value), a performative perspective traces how and with what devices expected futures are imbued with particular value(s) (Berman 2011; Asayama et al. 2022, Helgesson & Muniesa 2013; Geiger & Gross 2018; Kirkegaard et al. forthcoming). It has e.g. been demonstrated how some markets become valued as “novel, ethical and good” (Asdal et al. 2021). EoE traces how particular forms of expertise with their tools performs the expected future of PtX in particular ways. Combined, the three strands illustrate implications of distinctive ways of performing certain valuations of what a ‘good’ (or ‘bad’) PtX future holds. This helps to examine how support can be mobilized around demonstrations, tests, and living labs to enact the expected future of a decarbonized society (Pfotenhauer et al. 2022; Ryghaug & Skjølsvold 2020; Laurent 2016; Marres & Stark 2020; Augustine et al. 2019), and the (potentially) ensuing controversies.