>>...Germany is building brand new carbon-belching gas power plants and is still heavily dependent on coal power plants too.

Viewed in contrast with those coal plants the NG plants are indeed flowers and butterflies. Even if the coal plants are equipped with scrubbers they still emit more particulate matter - and loads more CO2 than the NG ones. On top of that, NG is a very good match for renewables as they're quickly 'dispatchable' (can go from doing nothing to outputting megawatts) compared to the coal plants that take more than a day (so they'd have to keep running 24x7 to 'fill in' when renewables drop out). If the NG plants have MHD, that 'quickly' becomes near instantaneous for about 20-30% of rated output. If it's gas turbines, it's a few minutes for 90%. Steam takes longer.

Are they as good as nuclear? Nope. But Germany has the politics that it has - without getting into the possibility that the anti-nuke movement there started as something fostered by the KGB/FSB.

Germany has a *lot* of coal. Even worse, it's soft high-sulfur coal. NG is so much better than more coal plants - especially using that super dirty coal.

Finally, Germany has a lot of renewable if you go by the rating plate on each wind turbine, each PV panel - but actual output is far, far below that because central Europe is a relatively cloudy, not very windy place. Germany does have coastline on the North Sea, which *is* windy, so offshore theoretically makes a huge amount of sense - until you get to how difficult it is to build anything in the North Sea and have it last for more than a couple of years. This is a major issue for renewables as the cost is all 'up front'.