The workshop aimed to examine the challenges and opportunities facing Latin America in terms of hydrogen storage, with a particular focus on key technologies and available policy spaces. The discussion emphasised a cross-cutting question: how to use the intellectual property system to enhance the capacity for green hydrogen generation and scaling in the region, without reproducing technological dependencies or limiting competition. In this context, the balance between incentives for innovation, access to enabling technologies and competitive conditions in emerging markets was analysed.

Throughout the exchange, the role of the main actors in the hydrogen ecosystem—technology owners, research centres, infrastructure developers, public agencies, regulators, and potential industrial adopters—was addressed, taking into account their strategies, incentives, and interests. This mapping exercise identified areas where opportunities may open up for local industries, whether through incremental innovation, technological adaptation, production chains, licensing, public-private cooperation or national capacity building, especially at critical stages of the value chain.

The project ‘Intellectual Property, Regulation and Innovation in Hydrogen Technologies in Latin America’ analyses how intellectual property and competition frameworks can drive—or eventually limit—the development of the hydrogen economy in the region. Based on a comparative study in five strategic countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico), it examines the patent landscape, the risks of technological concentration, and opportunities to strengthen local innovation, with a view to proposing guidelines and recommendations for public policy.

As a result of the workshop, relevant inputs were gathered to guide the next steps of the project, focusing on the intersection between competition law, the regulatory framework, and strategic R&D and investment decisions. The objective is to move toward concrete proposals that will enable Latin America to build an institutional environment that favours innovation, competition, and the efficient adoption of hydrogen technologies, contributing to an energy transition with greater regional capacity and local productive benefits.