Germany spent a lot of money on renewables and they still ended up as one of the countries with the highest levels of CO2 in Europe. That said, it's not for nothing because while this is was a combination of a lot of mistakes, everyone else gets to learn from these mistakes. Other countries could simply cut emissions by replacing coal with gas, cheaply. Now they can switch to renewables at a much better price too since they've waited while Germany did a lot of the learning the hard way.