Energy storage boom drives battery shift, leaving nickel, cobalt behind

LONDON (Reuters) -When Fidra Energy acquired a 55-acre (22-hectare) patch of northern England countryside in 2023, its plan to transform it into a 1.45 gigawatt energy storage facility - Europe's largest once completed - was far from a done deal. "We were struggling to make the economics work," Chris Elder, the Edinburgh-based company's CEO, told Reuters. But that was before the lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries being used in the project, which were already recording significant improvements in performance, roughly halved in cost in a period of just 18 months.