Governing Path Constitution of Energy Transition in Fields: A Practice-Theoretical Perspective on Establishing a Green Hydrogen Infrastructure in Germany

Today, heterogeneous organizations constitute energy transitions in globally embedded social fields by coordinating activities around specific issues like wind and solar energy, electromobility, or green hydrogen in time-space. One of the main challenges of energy transitions is the constellation of paths: Some highly established paths support national energy systems, while various issue-based paths related to the energy transition challenge them. Ensembles of organizations with different societal backgrounds and capabilities govern the paths and transformations to some degree, with some organizations engaging in parallel paths. Using the ongoing transformation of German industrial energy infrastructure from fossil fuels towards green hydrogen and its new transnational supply chains, we will present some ideas and findings from our research project, “Recursive Norm Formation in the Energy Transition,” funded by the German Science Foundation.

Our approach goes beyond traditional views of path dependence and creation by examining the simultaneous constitution (Windeler 2003, Sydow et al. 2012) of multiple paths by reflexive organizations (Ortmann et al. 2023[1997]). We look at how ensembles of organizations coordinate social interactions and relations around issues in time-space (Windeler 2021), shaping constellations of paths and developments like the energy transition in social fields. Our research utilizes a processual multi-level analysis to capture the dynamics between organizations and fields (Windeler/Jungmann 2023). It examines the coordinated organizational field practices constituting different socio-technical pathways in the energy transition (Berkhout et al. 2004, Geels/Schot 2007, Geels et al. 2016).

Empirically, we investigate cooperation between companies, ministries, associations, think tanks, courts, and movement organizations that shape the socially embedded energy transformation processes and path constitution. Using the example of green hydrogen infrastructure, we show how organizations in social fields and constellations of paths make the European paths partly overlap and contradict the global ones.