Taewoong Co., a South Korean maker of parts for wind power plants, rose the most in more than eight months in Seoul trading on speculation demand for renewable energy will increase.
Taewoong advanced 8.3 percent to 44,400 won as of the 3 p.m. close on the Korea Exchange, the biggest gain since Sept. 15. OCI Co., South Korea's biggest maker of polysilicon, rallied 9 percent. Hanwha Chemical Corp. rose 9.6 percent, the second-best performer on the MSCI Asia Pacific Index.
Germany wants to double renewable energy output by 2020 from 17 percent last year, Chancellor Angela Merkel said yesterday at a press conference in Berlin. Merkel's coalition endorsed a blueprint to shut its nuclear-power plants by 2022, repealing the law she pushed to extend the life of the reactors to become the biggest nation to exit atomic power.
"The news flow from Germany is definitely driving renewable energy companies higher especially after some of those companies recently were badly hit by concerns of lower price outlooks," Han Sang Soo, a fund manager at Samsung Asset Management Co. in Seoul, which oversees about $29 billion in assets, said by phone today.
Switzerland's cabinet this month decided to phase out nuclear power by 2034 following the meltdown of three earthquake-hit reactors in Japan. Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan also pledged to generate 20 percent of the nation's electricity from renewable forms of energy by the 2020s.
