EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Arenas of Expectations for Hydrogen Technologies

Sjoerd Bakker (), Harro van Lente () and Marius Meeus ()

No 08-19, Innovation Studies Utrecht (ISU) working paper series from Utrecht University, Department of Innovation Studies

Abstract: Technological options can be regarded as variations in an evolutionary development process. The variations are put forward by their respective technological communities and are selected by technology selectors. Building on the notion of quasi-evolutionary technology development we show how technological communities secure their position on R&D agendas through feeding and maintaining expectations in arenas of expectations. We examine this process by studying the expectations work of the community that tries to develop metal hydrides for the on-board storage of hydrogen for mobile applications. Metal hydrides are proposed as a promising alternative to gaseous and liquid hydrogen storage but are yet underdeveloped. Its proponents however, succeed in convincing their sponsors of the future potential of metal hydrides. In this paper we show how expectations of this technological option are raised and maintained by its developers and how this has kept them on hydrogen technology agendas for over 40 years.

Keywords: alternative fuel; energy storage; hydrogen; mobility; on-board (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene
Date: 2008-10, Revised 2008-10
View list of references View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.geo.uu.nl/isu/pdf/isu0819.pdf Version October 2008 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:uis:wpaper:0819

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Innovation Studies Utrecht (ISU) working paper series from Utrecht University, Department of Innovation Studies
Series data maintained by Floortje Alkemade ().

 
Page updated 2009-11-24
Handle: RePEc:uis:wpaper:0819