Julia Kirch Kirkegaard

Project title

The Expertise of Expectations, and the case of Power-to-X

What is your project about?

My project investigates whether a certain form of expertise exists that creates expectations for our technological future, that are so influential – i.e., that have so much agency – that they come to shape, how the future is being enacted. We know a lot about how expectations shape the future, but we still do not know how the expertise behind expectations render them with power and agency by ‘charging’ them with certain values, e.g. social, environmental, or techno-economic. I shed light on this using the case of Power-to-X (PtX), which has sparked visions of accelerating the green transition across sectors through using green hydrogen. For the first time, looking at the agency, or agencies, of expertise that lie behind expectations, the project can tell us more about which values come to count, but also those that do not, when the direction for our technological future is being decided.

How did you become interested in your particular field of research?

I have long held an interest in how technology and science within the energy transition create – and are being shaped by – social and economic processes. But my theoretical foundation from Science & Technology Studies (STS) and Economic Sociology was stress tested when I was hired to work in an engineering department. Besides being pushed to prove and demonstrate the value of social sciences I, myself, came to sense the valuation struggles playing out between different forms of expertise, their devices, and the effect they have on what is being attributed with value – and what is not – when the energy transition is being designed. I have chosen to use these first challenging years to my advantage, using the “alien” universe of techno-economic expertise as my laboratory, turning it into the object of inquiry so we can learn more about controversies in the green transition.

What are the scientific challenges and perspectives in your project?

We ethnographically follow how networks of expertise have enacted powerful expectations for PtX, and the instruments and tools they use to do this. We also trace alternative networks of expertise expressing concerns and valuations that are seldom, if ever, included in shaping and enacting the PtX vision. The project concludes with interventions through experimental workshops, where we seek to re-orchestrate networks of expertise to detect opportunities and barriers for re-calibrating valuations, that is, intervening in what should come to count. Interventions in valuations and their agency are new and ethically challenging, but I argue that they are necessary to explore the space for bypassing some of the power imbalances and agencies. If we succeed, we can open the ’control-room’ to include more forms of expertise to avoid blinkered development and ensure a more sustainable development.

What is your estimate of the impact, which your project may have to society in the long term?

A deeper understanding of the role of expertise in shaping our technological future and ensuing controversies is critical to finding ways of doing things differently. The project’s new theoretical and methodological approach to re-calibration of valuations can ensure more critical awareness of what kinds of expertise are being included and excluded, avoiding locking us in to blinkered technological futures. In the case of PtX, this can help to create a more sustainable green transition as we fight climate change. Meanwhile, the hydrogen vision – with PtX and CCUS (Carbon Capture, Usage and Storage) taking center-stage – is just a case of the agency of expectations: new expectations and hype are created around new technologies all the time, with different networks of expertise and valuation struggles, and the case can thus be used for extrapolation and comparison.

Which impact do you expect the Sapere Aude programme will have on your career as a researcher?

The Sapere Aude: DFF Starting Grant gives me the opportunity to push several fields of research – particularly the Sociology of Expectations, STS, transition studies, and Social Acceptance – in a new direction. It strengthens my position as research leader, as I can expand the small STS-based research group, I have established and lead at Department of Wind & Energy Systems, which forms part of the multidisciplinary section Society, Market & Policy (SMP) that I have pioneered. This I can do in collaboration with my new ERC project: while developed separately, they share an interest in expertise. This allows me to build a new field, namely a critical sociology of the agency and devicing of expertise. With this, I hope to become an accomplished research leader with international impact, while pushing DTU Wind & Energy Systems, and DTU more generally, in a more interdisciplinary direction.

Background and personal life

I seem to always have been drawn to seeing new patterns in my data. I tend to get really excited by new ideas, and I always find myself pushing my own boundaries, but also the boundaries of research fields, to explore if things could be understood and done otherwise. I can see that with this in mind, there is a connection between the many things I have done in challenging the status quo by throwing myself into the difficult spaces between things. In this sense, I have always worked as a ‘translator’, whether it be in interdisciplinary bridge-building, as a military interpreter, or in fieldwork in foreign languages. In this work, I have found that I could get into some of the key parameters and metrics – even algorithms – at the heart of controversy in energy transitions and beyond. This has also given me the courage to intervene, helping to strive for a more sustainable and just future.