What are the best hydrogen stocks for UK traders to watch?

Investing in hydrogen: what you need to know

Hydrogen is everywhere: hydrogen is the most abundant gas in the universe – approximately 75% of all baryonic matter is hydrogen. This abundance of hydrogen makes it one of the most renewable sources of energy on the planet.

There are many ways to extract hydrogen: traditionally, hydrogen is produced through the electrolysis of water. However, several energy companies have now developed more efficient techniques to create hydrogen energy with minimal waste. These include the use of solid oxide fuel cells, alkaline fuel cells, and proton exchange membrane technology.

It’s a cheap source of clean fuel: when used in a fuel cell, hydrogen energy leaves minimal waste, with water being the main by-product.

It has the backing of the UK government: the British government has committed to becoming a carbon zero country by 2050, and one of the ways it intends to meet this target is by encouraging the use of hydrogen power. Financial and regulatory support is expected to follow in the months and years ahead.

It’s attracting investment: hydrogen company stocks have been on an upward trend as investors start to spot the potential of hydrogen energy. The UK government’s Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution report has predicted that hydrogen power could deliver more than £4 billion in private investment over the next decade.

Despite the US backtracking, for many major global economic players environmental, social and governance (ESG) remains a priority for investors and corporates, investing in hydrogen fuel is likely to rise.

How to invest or trade in hydrogen stocks

1. Learn more about hydrogen stocks
2. Decide if you want to trade or invest
3. Create an account
4. Search for hydrogen stocks on our app or web platform
5. Make your investment or trade

Investing lets you take direct ownership of hydrogen shares – and you’ll benefit from any upward movement in the share’s price.

The purpose of investing is to create long-term wealth from capital gains and dividends, while managing risk to minimise any losses.

You can also trade hydrogen stocks. This uses leverage and takes a shorter term view. Leverage enables you to receive full market exposure for an initial deposit, known as margin.

For instance, with 5:1 leverage, you could open a £5,000 position while only depositing £1,000 as ‘margin’. A 10% market movement could result in a 50% gain or loss on your deposited margin.

Negative balance protection will prevent you from losing more than you put in but market movements can be unpredictable and you could lose your full deposit.

Top hydrogen stocks to watch

The majority of the UK’s hydrogen-focused stocks are listed on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM), which houses smaller-capped companies with growth potential, and only three have a market capitalisation above £100 million. While several majors are investing in hydrogen development, there are currently no larger companies on the LSE which focus solely on the element. The following are ordered by market capitalisation, with one smaller stock that could be one to watch in the coming months:

1. Ceres Power
2. ITM Power
3. AFC Energy
4. Clean Power Hydrogen

Ceres Power (Market cap: £568 million)

Ceres Power is an innovator in solid oxide fuel manufacturing, a novel, inexpensive, low energy method of manufacturing hydrogen. It’s partnered with a number of international brands to secure funding and distribution channels while it attempts to scale up.

At around 300p per share, the hydrogen stock is drastically down since its 1,626p pandemic heyday. However, its fuel cells represent an area of immense potential, especially given its partnerships with Bosch, Doosan Fuel Cell, and Linde Engineering.

Ceres’ key advantage is that its fuel cells can be used with both traditional hydrocarbon energy sources as well as hydrogen. This means its clients can slowly transition to hydrogen, representing a smaller corporate investment risk.

Initial tests of its solid oxide electrolyser module ‘give confidence that this technology can deliver green hydrogen at around 25% more efficiently than incumbent lower temperature technologies.’ The company has been awarded the coveted MacRobert award for the ‘spectacular’ engineering success as a result.

Ceres Power performed well throughout 2024, bringing in £112.8 million in new orders, contributing to a revenue increase of 132%. This success was largely driven by the company’s partnership with Taiwanese Delta. Although some investors see this partnership as a threat to long-term growth as it’ll limit the company’s ability to expand into China, most see it as a positive.

In its end of June 2025 half-year results revenue declined by 26% though, mainly because the prior-year period included significant one-off licence income from a Delta Electronics agreement that did not recur in 2025. As a result, the revenue base was lower even though the underlying business continued operating and the company transitioned from R&D towards commercial production. 

Ceres Power CEO Phil Caldwell described the period as a key phase in the company’s transition from an R&D-led organisation to a commercially focused business, highlighting mass production milestones with partners such as Doosan and positioning the company to meet growing demand for solid-oxide power systems, particularly from markets like AI data centres. He emphasised adapting to changing market opportunities and executing the company’s business transformation programme to drive future growth.

Analysts have given the stock a ‘buy’ rating, with a price target of 375p in the next 12-month period.

Ceres Power weekly candlestick chart

ITM Power (Market cap: £385 million)

ITM Power is a producer of electrolyzes, low-carbon hydrogen gas generation based on proton exchange membrane technology. As arguably the largest dedicated green hydrogen operator in the UK, ITM’s future prospects could be bright.

For its full-year 2025 earnings, the company reported strong results with revenues increasing by nearly 58% to £26.04 million. This robust performance has continued into February 2026, when the company raised its full-year 2026 revenue guidance to £40 million–£43 million, compared with its prior forecast of £35 million–£40 million, reflecting strong project progress and contributions from recently won contracts. 

CEO Dennis Schulz said the company was delivering strong revenue performance while increasing its firm contract backlog and that ITM remains well-positioned with a healthy level of sales activity.

Analysts rate the stock as a ‘buy’, with an average price target of 77.5p over the next 12-month period.

ITM Power weekly candlestick chart

AFC Energy (Market cap: £161 million)

AFC Energy is a leading provider of alkaline fuel cell systems, used in everything from electric vehicles to space shuttles. In October 2023 the company announced that its ammonia cracker technology successfully achieved 99.99% hydrogen from single reactor testing, with the results being independently tested by the National Physical Laboratory.

For context, this tech could deliver ‘fuel cell grade hydrogen on a modular, scalable basis,’ which could be key to the hydrogen world at large. However, like the above two companies, the stock has fallen sharply since early 2021.

In 2024 the company reported strong results which were largely driven by selling its Hydrogen generator to equipment rental company Speedy Hire. This contributed to a revenue of £4 million and cash reserves remained at £15.4 million.

The company’s end of October 2025 full-year results showed a revenue drop of around 98% to £100,000. CEO John Wilson - who joined the company in early January 2025 - stated that the reason for the sharp fall was the result of a strategic reset and restructuring, prioritising commercial viability and moving away from short-term sales in favour of long-term contract development as part of its broader transition towards scalable hydrogen and fuel cell solutions. This reset deliberately weighed near-term top-line figures to align the business with future growth opportunities and tighter cost control. 

He also said that he had been focusing on building a “business capable of disrupting our industry” by progressing partnerships, developmental milestones and technology deployment, and expressed confidence that 2026 would see conversion of a growing pipeline into contractual orders and sustained revenue growth without reliance on government subsidies.

Only one analysts seems to cover the company and rates the stock as a ‘strong buy’, with a price target of 22.64p over the next 12-month period.

AFC Energy weekly candlestick chart

Clean Power Hydrogen (Market cap: £209,000)

Clean Power Hydrogen is a UK based company which specialises in green hydrogen technology. Its Membrane-Free Electrolyser works to produce pure hydrogen and oxygen. When powered by renewable energy, this technology can produce green hydrogen which can be used for applications such as electricity storage and powering electric cars.

The company’s 2024 full-year results showed a widened £14.4 million loss and a sharp fall in cash to £0.3 million, prompting a £5.7 million post-year-end equity raise. At the same time management described 2024 as a pivotal year marked by progress towards commercialisation and key milestones, including the final (Site Acceptance Test) SAT for the MFE110 electrolyser  – successfully completed in May 2025 - and the Factory Acceptance Test (FAT) for the MFE220 1 MW unit – also completed later in the year.

Now that Clean Power Hydrogen has completed both, it can compete with more traditional methods of hydrogen production. Going forward, the company is looking to move away from developing this technology and focus on the production and selling of it.

It’s possible that hydrogen power will become a significant source of energy as the green revolution accelerates, particularly given the political prominence of energy security. And as there is a dearth of UK-based hydrogen stocks on the market, Clean Power Hydrogen could be an excellent, though risky, early investment with a lot of growth potential.

Clean Power Hydrogen weekly candlestick chart

Where next for Hydrogen?

The domestic and global markets for hydrogen power are growing, for several reasons.

1. The rise of environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) investing

On a global scale, the popularity of ESG investing is set to draw new attention to clean energy markets such as hydrogen, as more and more corporates and investors carve out ESG allocations in their investment portfolios.

2. The UK government has set ambitious new green energy targets

In the UK, hydrogen power has been specifically highlighted as a future growth industry and a way to help meet the country’s target of net zero carbon emissions by 2050. The publication of the UK’s hydrogen strategy report has outlined the opportunities and limitations of using hydrogen power as an alternative to fossil fuels. However, it’s worth noting that in March 2025 the Conservative Party leadership publicly dropped support for the 2050 target, describing it as “impossible,” although that position reflects internal party politics rather than a change in statutory government policy.

​The UK government’s Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution has set a target of developing up to 10 gigawatts of low carbon hydrogen production capacity by 2030 and use across sectors such as industry, power, transport and possibly heating.

3. More private and public investment is expected in the hydrogen space

The Green Industrial Revolution report concluded that 'driving the growth of low carbon hydrogen could deliver…over £4 billion of private investment in the period up to 2030' as well as 'savings of 41 MtCO2e between 2023 and 2032, or 9% of 2018 UK emissions'. These plans will be supported by an up to £240 million ‘Net Zero Hydrogen Fund’.

This suggests that there could be a robust future for hydrogen stocks in the UK as the government’s clean energy plan takes shape.

4. Energy giants are diversifying into clean energy

Energy giants BP, Enegex and Siemens Energy explored hydrogen development, but in late 2025 BP withdrew its previous Teesside hydrogen project (which had targeted up to ~1 GW of hydrogen production by 2030). Enegix Energy remains on track to build a $5.4 billion green hydrogen plant in Brazil, though. It is expected to use 3.4 GW of baseload renewables to produce hundreds of millions of kilograms of hydrogen annually. Siemens Energy also continues working with UK partners (notably SSE) on the “Mission H2 Power” initiative to develop gas turbines capable of operating on 100% hydrogen, part of efforts to decarbonise power generation and support hydrogen integration in the UK.

5. Emerging opportunities for hydrogen fuel

The electric vehicle (EV) boom is set to boost the popularity of hydrogen power. Hydrogen fuel cells are incredibly energy efficient, and unlike battery-powered EVs, they don’t require lengthy periods of charging. Toyota Mirai is an early example of hydrogen fuel cell technology in electric vehicles.

Best hydrogen stocks summed up

At the moment, Ceres Power, ITM Power and AFC Energy are the only three UK companies that are focusing on hydrogen power manufacturing with a market capitalisation over £100 million.

As the manufacturing process becomes cheaper and more energy efficient, other companies could join them.

Meanwhile, the world’s leading energy providers have been paying closer attention to hydrogen power, and the UK government has committed to increasing the country’s reliance on hydrogen power in the coming years.

This makes hydrogen an exciting segment of the clean energy market, with plenty of room for growth in the medium and long term.