Feasibility filtering in the funding arena: how techno-economic expectations shape research agendas at the chemistry/energy nexus

Increasingly, funding programs in Europe seek to align scientific research agendas with societal challenges. A promissory regime results around emerging science and technology, in which researchers seek to present their work in line with the expectation of disruptive but feasible technological innovation. In the fields of energy, materials and chemistry research, many turn to (prospective) techno-economic assessments as to respond to this demand. Based on fieldwork and an interview study, I show how these quantitative anticipations can function as ‘feasibility filters’ in the process of agenda-setting that implicitly translate the interests, infrastructures and imaginaries of large-scale industries into technical targets for laboratory science. Non-economic considerations come second, after the rate-determining step of the feasibility filter. Finally, I argue that the resulting, paradoxical dynamics of techno-economic alignment is at odds with calls in STS to open up sustainable transformation and innovation pathways via socio-political and economic alternatives.