The UK needs to move faster than planned to unveil a national strategy for hydrogen – hailed by Prime Minister Boris Johnson as Britain’s emissions-cutting ‘big bet’ – or risk seeing a chance for global leadership in the key energy transition fuel evaporate, warned a renewables industry body.

RenewableUK said the country’s government should by the end of 2020 set a roadmap and targets for how green hydrogen from renewables can grow from a niche technology to the central pillar of the UK’s energy system, but the country’s energy secretary Alok Sharma recently told the House of Commons that it won’t be ready until early next year.