Credible Expectations – the US Department of Energy’s Hydrogen Program role as enactor and selector of hydrogen technologies

Abstract

The importance of expectations in sociotechnical transitions is widely recognized. However, there are many competing transition paths and even more competing visions and expectations, while only a limited of number of paths can be supported. In the literature so far, not much attention has been paid to the actual assessment of expectations and their role in the selection of promising technologies; what makes one expectation more credible than another and, furthermore, who voices the expectations and who assesses them?