Abstract

This article examines national green hydrogen (GH2) strategies, or 'roadmaps', as sociotechnical devices that produce and mobilise visions of energy futures. We conduct a comparative analysis of GH2 roadmaps of 17 countries. Drawing on recent debates on energy anticipation, we approach these roadmaps as narrative devices that construct storylines concerning the desirability and urgency of GH2. Our analysis focus on two key narrative aspects: the value grammars these documents invoke to justify GH2, and the expectations frameworks that shape their visions of the conditions, actors and courses of action associated with its development. Two findings stand out. First, as anticipatory devices, GH2 roadmaps advance a narrative arc that underscore the urgent need to develop the GH2 industry. While they mobilise diverse justifications - environmental, commercial and technological - they converge on a shared grammar: the promise of decarbonisation goes hand in hand with that of economic opportunity. Rather than addressing potential frictions between economic development and environmental impact, these narratives fuse both into a win-win scenario. Second, GH2 roadmaps envision an energy future that reproduces asymmetrical dependencies: countries in the Global South are cast as producers and exporters of GH2, while countries in the Global North appears as technology developers and importers - thereby reinforcing an unequal distribution of costs and benefits in the energy transition.