With all the talk of electric cars, that other great contender for greener transport, hydrogen, is in danger of being left by the wayside.

But one small and highly motivated and innovative firm has just won a major award for championing this potential fuel of the future — that one day may power boats, planes and trains as well as cars.

Cella Energy, of Harwell, took first prize in the Shell Springboard Awards for an invention which brings zero-emission hydrogen cars a step closer.

However, the invention, which won Cella a cool £40,000 from (ironically, perhaps) oil company Shell, is not a breakthrough for hydrogen power itself but rather for a clever plan for storing and transferring the potentially volatile stuff safely. (After all, no-one wants a repeat of the Graf Zeppelin hydrogen balloon disaster of 1937).

Cella Energy is a spin-out company from the Science and Technology Facilities Council’s Rutherford Appleton Laboratory.

Its product, developed from scientists’ research at the London Centre for Nanotechnology at University College, London and at Oxford University, is hydrogen stored in tiny micro-beads, each 30 times smaller than a human hair, which make the gas safe to handle in air — and brings the moment when we might all start filling up at the pumps with hydrogen instead of petrol or diesel that much closer.

The new material contains as much hydrogen for a given weight as the high-pressure tanks currently used to store hydrogen and can be poured and pumped like a liquid.

Prof Stephen Bennington of the STFC said: “In some senses hydrogen is the perfect fuel. It has three times more energy than petrol per unit of weight, and when it burns it produces nothing but water.

“But the only way to pack it into a vehicle is to use very high pressures or very low temperatures, both of which are expensive to do.

“Our new hydrogen storage materials offer real potential for running cars, planes and other vehicles that currently use hydrocarbons on hydrogen, with little extra cost and no inconvenience to the driver.”

Stephen Voller, chief executive of Cella Energy, said: “Consumers want to be able to travel 300-400 miles before they have to refuel. And when they do have to fill up they want to be able to do so as quickly as possible.”

He added: “Being named the overall Shell Springboard winner for 2011 is a great boost for Cella Energy, which will give us real credibility in the eyes of customers and potential investors alike.

“The £40,000 will enable us to scale up our technology to an industrial scale.”

Shell Springboard is designed to help small and medium-size companies take commercial advantage of the opportunities presented by the challenge of climate change.

Cella cetainly falls into that category since carbon emissions from transport account for about 25 per cent of the UK total at present.

James Smith, chairman of Shell UK, said: “Over the last six years, Shell Springboard has supported more than 50 small businesses that have new ideas for products and services to tackle climate change.

“It’s great to see these businesses coming through even in these tough times. Congratulations and best wishes for success to Cella Energy.”

The company received its award last month at a ceremony at the Royal Society of Science in London. The invention impressed judges including climate change expert Lord Oxburgh, and Greenpeace chief scientist Doug Parr.

Now Cella Energy has teamed up with major chemical investor Thomas Swan.

Tim Bestwick, of STFC Innovations, said: “We believe they will be a great partner with nearly 90 years of experience in making high performance chemical products, including nanomaterials.”

Prof Bennington said the company now employed a total of five people including himself and a student.

He added: “The link-up with Thomas Swan is crucial, not only because of the capital they have provided but also because this is now all about how to scale up our laboratory discoveries. And they have the necessary experience and expertise to do that.”

And as for electric cars currently hogging the road ahead, he said that a number of companies, including BMW, with whom Cellar is in contact, are still researching hydrogen in a big way — because hydrogen offers the kind of range between refuelling points that electric cars cannot.

Prof Bennington said: “We have three objectives: first, safety. In other words to make hydrogen safe for storage, delivery, and use. Second, to make it available with a low green premium. In other words, to make it reasonably cheap. Third, to make the infrastructure competitive. In other words to make it available at the pumps in much the same way as petrol; and to provide the kind of range people have become used to."

Ironically, much hydrogen is now produced at oil refineries through a process called steam reformation.

Prof Bennington said the process used heat and energy but the total carbon emissions for a hydrogen powered car was about half that of a similar petrol-driven car.