Shares in wind-turbine makers Vestas and Nordex are among the stock market's top gainers as investors take in the Democratic wave. So is Orsted, the offshore-wind pioneer that was in the firing line when President Trump started canceling projects that were already under way in U.S. waters.
Solar-power names are also up as investors venture back into the green-energy sector. Solar-panel manufacturer First Solar and rooftop-solar company Sunrun are up sharply premarket. Overseas, South Korea's Hanwha Solutions and OCI Holdings and Germany's SMA Solar are gaining.
Trump famously hates wind turbines, calling them "big ugly windmills." His administration slashed subsidies for green energy, stepped up trade barriers and raised permitting hurdles as it pursued an "energy dominance" agenda centered on fossil fuels.
The stock moves Wednesday reflect broad optimism that the worst may be over for the green industrial complex, rather than any concrete good news, said Harry Braithwaite, industrials sales at research firm Oxcap Analytics. A Democratic Congress wouldn't be able to extend federal tax credits for green energy, for example.
"What a Democratic Congress can do is softer: appropriations, oversight of the offshore stop-work orders and permitting," he said.
In one indication of how Trump's anti-green-energy executive actions will likely face more pushback, Democrats in Congress have been calling for a probe of deals in which the administration bought out energy companies' offshore-wind leases.
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