This is actually not true (or was only very briefly true) [1] Germany has added a lot of renewables over the last couple years. And more than compensated their nuclear plants, which only played a minor role in Germany's electricity production at that point anyway. Of course Germany could have reduced the CO2 output even more if the nuclear plants hadn't been turned off. However, when the discussion heated up again last year it was basically already a moot point. Planning to decommission the plants was already too advanced. There was no personal, no company that wanted to operate the plants, no fuel, etc.
The moment they shut down their last nuclear plant they had several quiet nice in a row. The total output of renewables was about 4% of the installed capacity.
So Germany had to burn copious amount of coal, and gas, and buy energy from France
- Wind: 66.5 GW installed capacity. Generation: 1.82 GW, or 2.74% of that
- Solar: 69.1 GW of installed capacity. Generation: 0.38 GW, or 0.55% of that
- Hydro: 9.78 GW of installed capacity. Generation: 3.09 GW, or 31% of that
So Germany is busy burning gas (generation: 7.6 GW), coal (generation: 14.2 GW), and "bio fuels" (generation: 5 GW), and importing electricity from as far away as Norway
[1] https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=de&c...