Yes this experiment will be watched by the rest of the world. If it goes badly the effect could be the opposite of what was intended. Some of those negatives include power blackouts, building new coal fired power stations, increasing emissions, building transmission lines through pristine areas, hypocritically importing nuclear electricity from other European countries, taxpayer fatigue at cost overruns, dependence on Russian gas imports, loss of nuclear tax revenue and daft energy storage experiments that go wrong. There are early warning signs for several of these negatives.

Even if they can largely achieve their goals the cost may remove them from the top spot as the European economic power house. If so they won't be bailing out Greece five years from now. In contrast the UK is sceptical of renewable energy and is building new nuclear power stations to get back into the hunt. If Germany is forced to re-open its mothballed nukes it will not only be a major embarrassment but a pointer to the fact it can't be done with renewable energy alone.

Given the European financial crisis, what is the real chance of Germany spending $130bn on green energy? Considering that this will only generate enough power to cope with increased demand over the next decade, let alone shut a few nuclear power stations.

The most likely reality is that this is a postponement of a decision to 2015 after a new election when memories have faded, and the promise can quietly be ditched.

A very skeptical conclusion from the shadow minister of everything. Germany has been big on renewables, with their support for personal household solar. It is power for industry that needs cleaning up. A change to gas is better than burning coal. This will happen in victoria. Gas fired boilers need little to no manpower to operate, so costs will be stable. Solar farms are self running, Wind power and hydro are the way to go.

I'm in agreement with Taswegian and Shadow Minister, I am sure that Europe's industrial powerhouse would not shut down nuclear reactors without an alternative plan in mind. They simply cannot run their giant industrial complexes on solar and wind power as it is now.

While Germany will continue to be a leader in alternative energy, the reason for the annnouncement about shutting Nuclear power plants, could be that Merkel is basically stealing the Green Party's single most important issue and hoping to take much of their support.

I see the German strategy as a wonderful opportunity for the world to field test whether renewable energy really can run a major industrial country. If they succeed (as France did two decades ago to convert almost completely to nuclear power) it will be lauded as the future for other nations. If they fail, or more likely, are forced to postpone by several decades, it will be a warning to others (including Australia) about trying to move to 50+% renewables by 2050.

Storage will be the key. If Germany can develop cost-effective storage to lift wind and solar to 80+% capacity factor then we can say goodbye to using fossil fuels. Until then other countries like China and India will take the nuclear option as France did.

In fact, Merkel has basically opted to increase emissions. She has agreed to shut down an emissions free sector of the electricity industry that provided base load power. The closed reactors would have to be replaced with fossil fuel plants. My guess would be closed cycle gas turbines, rather than coal-fired, given the way that everyone is discovering gas these days. CCGTs are very clean these days, but still they will emit more than nuclear plants.

Although the amount being allocate for research and alternatives sounds impressive, its over five years, making $27 billion or so a year and its to underwrite projects. Although I'd have to look at the the details, I think that means that the development bank will lend the money, which means the private sector still has to arrange those projects and take the risk.

In any case, as noted, only a tiny fraction of installed wind energy (about 4-5 per cent in Aus) is counted when the energy authorities work out how much electricity capacity to keep on hand at any given time.. so it looks like the future is in gas turbines..