Historically, the practice of technology assessment has been concerned with unintended side-effects of technology, challenging too optimistic technological premises of eco-modernism. More recently, and in close relation to the climate crisis and a decolonial turn, TA’s tacit acceptance of established economic and social systems, including the economic growth paradigm, has been put up for discussion (Zoellick and Bisht 2018). Moreover, in Europe and the US, the rise of extreme-right governments is seen as a game changer for deliberative and evidence-based TA institutions, which are now being challenged by actors and movements that reject scientific consensus and seek to undermine pluralistic debate. Some argue that in this political-ecological context, TA needs to openly recognize its political nature, critically engage in democratic commitments (Delvenne and Parotte 2019) and start “thinking in alternatives” (Grunwald 2018, p. 1860).

Some argue that in this political-ecological context, technology assessment needs to openly recognize its political nature.

Authors in the field of science and technology studies (STS) and political economy have elaborated such alternatives, for example in terms of convivial or appropriate technology (Shanley 2021) and eco-innovation (Pansera 2011). All these approaches build on the systematic awareness that practices of framing, selecting, developing, deploying and infrastructuring technologies are intrinsically political. Since a few years, the insight that economic growth is fundamentally at odds with planetary boundaries (Richardson et al. 2023) has led to a renewed interest in post- or de-growth alternatives for technological innovation (Vetter 2018). Degrowth has been a central tenet of ecological economics that proposes alternatives to eco-modernism and scrutinizes the relationship between technology, productivity, and well-being (Pansera and Fressoli 2021). Degrowth directly critiques growth-oriented assumptions in mainstream technological innovation and policy discourses, calling instead for social and institutional change. Accordingly, different TA frameworks have been developed that move beyond questions of efficiency or equity towards assessing whether a technology is desirable, accessible, how ownership is arranged, and how socio-ecological costs and benefits are distributed (Vetter 2018; Zoellick and Bisht 2018; Ralph 2021).

Heterodox TA builds on these approaches to open-up space for the democratic deliberation of plural socio-technic futures, including care, feminist and indigenous perspectives (Arora and Van Dyck 2025). In this contribution, we follow the framework introduced by Zoellick and Bisht (2018) inspired by concepts of conviviality, degrowth and Marxism, because it is more compatible with high-tech innovations than other frameworks concerned with bottom-up innovation (Vetter 2018). Zoellick and Bisht (2018) propose five analytic dimensions: ecological impact, accessibility (for large part of the population), autonomy (individual and locally), decentralization (distributed and small-scale use) and innovation. These reflect foundational principles of heterodox economic thought such as sufficiency, democratic control, equity, and ecological embeddedness (Hickel 2020). Below, we use these dimensions to assess how EC research and innovation align with decarbonization and how they could be developed ‘convivially’ to fit a degrowth scenario.

EU and national governments promise to replace fossil fuels with new, often electrical technologies to decarbonize industrial and energy production, spurring investment in electrochemical solutions (Johnson et al. 2025). However, these technical fixes are still aligned with a growth paradigm, which is at odds with reducing ecological impact (Hickel 2020; Richardson et al. 2023). To scrutinize the potential to develop EC research in heterodox directions, we focus on emerging ‘power-to-X’ (P2X) technologies, more specifically H₂O electrolysis and CO₂ capture and utilization, which use EC principles to convert renewable electricity into chemical energy stored in molecules, which can be used as feedstock, fuel or energy storage (Epp and Pfaff 2019).

Hydrogen is most commonly classified with respect to methods of its production, in accordance to EU taxonomy. ‘Green’ hydrogen results from water electrolysis when renewable electricity is used and can replace CO₂-intensive ‘grey’ hydrogen in today’s industrial uses, to decarbonize fertilizer, (petro)chemical and steel industries and realize seasonal energy storage (Johnson et al. 2025). While production of ‘green’ hydrogen currently makes up less than 0.1 % of total global hydrogen production (0.1 Mt of a total 97 Mt, IEA 2024), the European Commission aims to both produce and import 10 Mt per year by 2030 (or 200 times current global green hydrogen production). This stark gap between present capacity and future ambition is often overlooked in policy and industry, as they prioritize investment and geopolitical influence.

Compared to water electrolysis’ mature development (Hassan et al. 2023), the electrocatalytic reduction of CO₂ into fuels and value-added chemicals has only in the last ten years experienced growing interest, pushing developments to prototype stages (Chakravarty et al. 2025). CO₂ electrolysis promises to replace fossil feedstocks in fuels and chemical industry in order to lower life-cycle emissions of these production processes (Vogt and Weckhuysen 2024). After CO₂ is captured (at an industrial point-source or with direct air capture), a renewable-powered electrolyzer converts it into bulk chemicals like carbon monoxide, formate, methane or more complex carbon chains like ethylene and ethanol (Detz et al. 2023). For both water electrolysis and CO₂ capture and utilization technologies, a range of options exist for cell designs, reaction conditions (e.g., temperature, pressure), operational lifetimes, and material use (for membranes, catalysts and electrodes).

In principle, P2X technologies can substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions but are still associated with substantial unintended negative impacts. Moreover, they are structured in a centralized, capital- and technology-intensive manner that makes them costly and complex.

Recent research including assessments of infrastructure, transport and leakages shows that full life cycle emissions of P2X technologies remain relatively high, depending strongly on energy source and location (de Kleijne et al. 2024). Land use impacts like biodiversity loss and habitat fragmentation arise from the expansion of renewable energy infrastructure, while CO₂ electrolysis’ territorial impact depends on the source of carbon (Sahu et al. 2024). Fresh water as input for electrolysis can be challenging in arid regions (Tonelli et al. 2023).

Socio-ecological impacts arise from the mining required for catalyst and electrode materials. This implies the extraction of rare earths and scarce metals like platinum-group metals, cobalt, nickel, copper, as well as iridium, yttrium, and high-purity graphite (Sahu et al. 2024; Sola et al. 2025). Large-scale deployment of P2X systems depends on geopolitically sensitive materials, with negative social effects in ‘green sacrifice zones’ like Democratic Republic of Congo (cobalt) and Indonesia (nickel) (Andreucci et al. 2023). Moreover, recent analyses (IEA 2025) highlight the difficulty of diversifying global supply chains and redistributing manufacturing to more localized or democratic contexts.

Most national policy plans focus on centralized hydrogen production and CO₂ capture and utilization at large scale, partly to improve energy security (Johnson et al. 2025). These are envisioned as integrated in global markets (Ueckerdt et al. 2021) that overlap with existing fossil infrastructures (such as gas pipelines and port infrastructures) and reproduce North-South dependencies (Cezne and Otsuki 2025). Also, the manufacturing of electrolyzers is highly specialized and centralized (Johnson et al. 2025) and the transport of P2X products requires complex infrastructure for compression, transport and storage (Mekonnin et al. 2025) and advanced expertise (Schotten et al. 2020). With the need for stable electricity provision and constrained access to critical resources, the possibility for autonomous production and use of P2X technologies at smaller scales is limited.

Thus, the application of water and CO₂ electrolyzers remains restricted to current hydrogen users in highly industrialized sectors, such as energy production, transport, petro- and agro-chemical industries (Johnson et al. 2025). Accessibility is limited by high capital expenditure (Detz et al. 2023) and potentially substantial operational costs (Henry et al. 2023). The higher cost of products from P2X processes may reduce their accessibility to smaller users. For instance, ‘green’ hydrogen is currently 2–3 times more expensive than ‘blue’ hydrogen, and products obtained by chemical transformation of CO₂ are also generally more expensive than conventional products (Johnson et al. 2025). This will provide an advantage to large industries and reinforces geographical inequalities (Dejonghe and Van De Graaf 2025).

The above assessment suggests misalignment between P2X technology scenarios and heterodox aims of overall energy and material throughput reduction (Ueckerdt et al. 2021), affordability, small-scale operation, creative use and communal ownership (Zoellick and Bisht 2018). Here, we explore potential directions to develop and structure P2X otherwise.

A heterodox P2X paradigm would focus on abundant materials locally sourced, ideally from waste streams, whereas recycling is currently underdeveloped for electrolyzers (Sola et al. 2025). E‑waste and urban mining could be used to source metals for catalysts in electrolysis (Seif et al. 2023) or upcycle (plastic) waste into synthetic fuels. Also, fresh water use can be reduced by turning to waste-, sea- or atmospheric water, also enabling accessibility and decentralization by using local nontraditional sources (Winter et al. 2022).

Decentralized P2X technology could play a role in more convivial scenarios by serving localized energy and material needs independent from centralized (and fossil) infrastructures and by supporting decentralized energy systems, e.g., as seasonal energy storage. Many studies consider how this improves national or regional energy security. Decentralized chemicals production is feasible for syngas (Wiltink et al. 2023). However, modelling studies of micro-grids or off-grid hydrogen point at high relative costs (Grunow 2022) and therefore call for miniaturization or co-location with, e.g., e‑methanol production to buffer against market variability (Alamia 2024).

Still, case studies of ‘mini-plants’ for hydrogen production, for example on islands, in buildings, or in a hospital (Assunçao et al. 2025), are promising, as they go beyond cost-efficiency to align with other values like self-sufficiency, energy autonomy and reduced ecological impact. Furthermore, food security goals (Cezne and Otsuki 2025) could inspire further development, as experiments exist with small-scale integrated production systems that locally convert solar energy into fertilizers (Sahu et al. 2024) or food components (Buchner et al. 2024), especially relevant to remote regions. Most of this research still requires advanced equipment, but a low-cost 3D printable flow cell design could give more researchers access to research reactors to further reduce barriers to EC knowledge (Heeschen et al. 2024).