Promises and perils Organising contested decarbonisation pathways in the European sustainable energy transition

A sustainable energy transition involves transforming a fossil-fuel-based energy system into one mainly powered by renewable and low-carbon energy. The European Union has taken serious steps towards a sustainable energy transition, seeking to weigh environmental and social impacts alongside economic and technological ones in its decisions. However, the transition remains an emerging phenomenon in business and management research, with core constructs still unsettled. This dissertation examines how the transition is organised and contested in the EU, focusing on which decarbonisation pathways are pursued, what counts as 'clean', what gets built, and who can take part. Drawing on feedback documents submitted by firms to European Commission consultations, EU policy documents, and data on steel decarbonisation projects, three chapters study hydrogen, widely promoted as a promising technology for decarbonisation. They show how firms frame materially distinct production methods as equally 'clean' (chapter 3); how EU regulation accommodates two competing corporate visions (system preservation and system creation) without resolving their conflict, thus contributing to an investment impasse (chapter 4); and how policy-driven expectations produced steel decarbonisation project announcements, most of which did not reach a final investment decision (chapter 5). Chapter 6, based on policy documents and interviews, analyses citizen-led energy initiatives in underprivileged neighbourhoods of Amsterdam Zuidoost and shows how opportunities to participate are unequal. The dissertation argues that problems arise when expectations become detached from the material conditions needed to realise them, and that public policy shapes which futures become feasible and legitimate.