From the Lab to the Industrial Park: Enactment of Professional Knowledge in the Energy Transition

In the context of climate change and energy transition targets, governments are looking for possible ‘future fuels’ that can be implemented in the short to medium term. Within the next decade the natural gas sector will be making a substantial transition to alternatives including hydrogen and ammonia. Our analysis addresses the management of sociotechnical risk in the transition. We move beyond an organizational view of accident prevention to the broader forms of social organization and forms of failure that actors must grapple. This includes the work context in which suppliers, logistics companies, consultants and contractors will have a major impact on the safety of new facilities that may be owned and operated by others. While a network view extends consideration of power relationships in useful ways, it moves analysis further away for consideration of the working life of professionals and changes in what is required of them. Implementation of such new technology at an industrial scale requires creation and enactment of new professional knowledge. This introduces a new category of epistemic risks addressing such issues as who owns theoretical knowledge about the new technology, how a new embodied knowledge can be developed and how both kinds of knowledge can best be shared. A network analysis is also silent on sources of risk beyond the technology, including those related to austerity and audit cultures, and political factors. This paper explores such structural and epistemic risks and their implications for organizations and professionals.