An underappreciated fact is that the Japanese/German renewable push starting in the early 2000s contributed a lot toward the global state of solar power now.

Solar programs/subsidies there is how a lot of local (and later Chinese) industry was bootstrapped despite being far from competitive with fossil energy back then.

Those initiatives might have accelerated the whole solar power industry by half a decade or more. We are now reaping even (indirect) benefit from industrializing countries (Pakistan, India, etc) that go straight to solar instead of conventional plants.

People often insist that western climate initiatives are "meaningless", "wasteful" and "ineffective", but examples like this prove that global effects are absolutely realistic.

If those two countries had fully invested into nuclear power back then, we might be significantly worse off right now as far as global CO2 emissions are concerned.