I think what's missing is the difficulty. The US did a purely economic side step led by the fracking boom with a coincidental effect being less emissions. The

I think what's missing is the difficulty. The US did a purely economic side step led by the fracking boom with a coincidental effect being less emissions. The next step following is where it becomes interesting, because now it's not easy, you can't just burn oil better and be done with it. Germany took a lot of the cost of the early investment enabling large scale manufacturing of PV and wind power. Sure that is inefficient compared to doing nothing, but this investment is what we're riding on today when LCOE of renewables are lower than both nuclear and fossil energy.