Contemporary concerns over climate change and environmental sustainability have recently generated heightened aspirations toward a hydrogen economy. While recent discussions of hydrogen energy suggest at a nascent field, the technology long been in development, with hydrogen’s potential use in mobility, power and heating. Indeed, the field of hydrogen energy has experienced several hype cycles since the early 20th century, including those of visionary entrepreneurs in the early 20th century, as well as recent interest that has coincided with concerns over climate change.
The expectations of entrepreneurs toward new technologies, such as hydrogen energy, have played an important role in shaping the trajectory of such emerging fields. Theoretically, this paper is informed by the recent scholarship on expectations (Borup et al 2006, Ruef and Markard 2010) that have explored how imagined futures (Beckert 2010) have played an important role the development of frontier fields. Technological expectations have been referred to as “real-time representations of future technological situations and capabilities” which are important in providing structure, direction, guidance, interest, and legitimacy to the trajectory of emerging fields” (Borup et al, 2006). The paper explores how prominent technological expectations toward hydrogen energy were created, and follows the fortunes of entrepreneurial initiatives that were generated.
This research is based on a range of sources, including archival documents and oral interviews. It builds on a long and rich body of business history scholarship on energy and the environment (Hannah 1979, Jones 2017, Rosen and Sellers 1999, Bergquist 2019), as well as recent scholarship that considers how shared expectations about the future have shaped industry pathways (Bátiz-Lazo, Haigh and Stearns 2014, Andersson 2021). In this context, this paper considers how historical expectations toward hydrogen energy informed the trajectory of businesses toward a “hydrogen transition.”