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Paper short abstract

Green hydrogen regulation in Argentina is being built through fragmented national and provincial initiatives. Mapping 18 regulatory instruments, this paper shows how weak institutionalization and misaligned incentives can steer the transition toward enclave outcomes over capability-building.

Paper long abstract

In a shifting global development landscape, green hydrogen is increasingly framed as a strategic pathway through which Global South countries seek to reposition themselves within emerging green value chains.

Green hydrogen (GH2) is framed as a “future industry” capable of reconciling decarbonisation with development. Yet, in emerging sectors the market does not pre-exist regulation: rules allocate rights, reduce uncertainty, and distribute risks and rents, thereby shaping whether investment translates into local capabilities or enclave dynamics. Against this backdrop, this paper asks how Argentina’s national and subnational GH2 regulatory initiatives configure market-building, and what this implies for state capacity and territorial agency in the green transition.

Empirically, the paper conducts qualitative document analysis of 18 regulatory items (laws, bills, programmes, agreements, and institutional creations) identified through a systematic digital search and coded in a comparative matrix. The analysis compares three dimensions: (i) institutional capacity (dedicated agencies, policy instruments, and implementation arrangements), (ii) the state’s positioning vis-à-vis firms (facilitator/planner/executor roles; incentive architectures; commitments to value-chain development), and (iii) nation–province relations and coordination.

As a work in progress, preliminary evidence points to an unsettled and contested state role, low institutionalisation, and incentive packages that are fragmented and only weakly linked to local content, R&D, workforce development, or socio-environmental safeguards. Moreover, multi-level fragmentation is likely, raising coordination risks for infrastructure planning and territorial bargaining. Overall, the paper reframes GH2 regulation as a developmental governance problem: regulatory design can prefigure either enclave export trajectories or capability-building futures, depending on how coordination and conditionalities are institutionalised.