What happened
Fuel cell stocks are blowing up (in a good way) in Wednesday afternoon trading. At 12:35 p.m. EST today, shares of Bloom Energy (BE 5.71%) were up 11.7%, Plug Power (PLUG 0.87%) stock was jumping 12.2%, and FuelCell Energy (FCEL -0.38%) was doing best of all, up an astonishing 17.4%.
You can probably thank Georgia voters for that.
Image source: Getty Images.
So what
There's been just about no news on fuel cell stocks since Morgan Stanley's round of price target hikes way back before Christmas. But that could change, now that the voters in Georgia appear to have elected two Democrats to the U.S. Senate. Assuming both Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock end up winning their seats, the Senate in 2021 will number 50 Republicans, 48 Democrats, and two independents leaning Democrat. That leaves Vice President-elect Kamala Harris to cast tie-breaking votes in the event of any deadlocks.
Now what
Although Democrats' Senate majority is frail, Tuesday's election in Georgia appears to have swung the balance of power in Washington decidedly in favor of the Democrats -- and thus potentially in favor of passage of a Green New Deal.
Whether such a bill gets passed, and what ends up getting into it, is not known at this time. But a Green New Deal could potentially provide fuel cell subsidies that were lacking in the latest stimulus bill. This hope, in a nutshell, is what is lifting shares of Bloom Energy, Plug Power, and especially FuelCell Energy today.
