There was definitely a period where the "renewables are too expensive" propaganda was winning and right wing German parties were successful in slowing renewables, particularly offshore wind rollout in Germany.
This will have cost them Billions, similar to the British right wing effectively banning onshore wind in Emgland at roughly the same time.
Both nations have done well with renewables, but could have done better and saved money and supported local business at the same time.
The cost of the renewables rollout in Germany is on the order of 2 trillion euros. They produce so much renewable energy that the prices regularly go negative, but then import at much higher prices when they don’t. They pay among the highest prices in Europe, and still their CO2 emissions are among the worst. If wind/solar as a whole were both as cheap as touted and as environmentally friendly, that should not be the case.
The whole world owes Germany a massive debt for their overpayment for renewables. Investing in renewables on a massive scale in the 90's is what really kicked off the virtuous cycle that led to the low costs of renewables today.
Germany would have been much better off building nuclear in the 90's. But because they invested in renewables instead, everybody (including Germany) has a much better option of building renewables in the 2020s.
Your source suggests that providing 95% of Texas energy with wind and solar and batteries will cost the same as providing it with nuclear and batteries.
I'm dubious about many of their assumptions but even your source shows that renewables are the obvious choice to power the world.
It's also interesting that the cost drops 50% if you don't need to cover the last 5%. A shame he didn't go further and calculate at 80% and so on like the recent Australian working paper.
I guess that would show that starting the rollout now would provide lots of savings that could be used to deploy the later percentiles.
This will have cost them Billions, similar to the British right wing effectively banning onshore wind in Emgland at roughly the same time.
Both nations have done well with renewables, but could have done better and saved money and supported local business at the same time.