This is a pretty misleading piece. A couple of major errors:

The central argument is that renewables basically replaced nuclear in Germany. But that is not* what happened. Simply put -- the continued operation of coal generation replaced the shut down nuclear, nearly on a one on one basis. These coal plants, all of them, would have been shut down absent the atomausstieg. Today, Germany currently produces about the same amount of power from coal (~160 TWh/y) as its nuclear fleet did before the shutdowns began (~160 TWh/y). Had Germany not shutdown its nuclear fleet it would burn zero coal today -- and would emit ~130 million tons of CO2-eq less greenhouse gases.

While Germany did reduce slightly coal power generation, it did this by dramatically increasing renewable generation and* fossil gas generation. Recall that fossil gas electricity generation has increased massively since the nuclear phase out began -- increasing from by more than a third since the beginning of the phase out. I don't really think anyone would argue that renewables plus fossil gas backup can not replace baseload power -- it can, just not particularly cleanly or cheaply.

The problem is that the German approach -- despite spending over €500 billion on the energiewiende -- did not make a low carbon electrical grid. It made an expensive, dirty grid. In 2022, a kWh of power generated in Germany produced on average 385 grams of greenhouse gas (in CO2-eq) -- 2021 was barely better at 365 g per kWh. Compare that to France, where in 2022 a kWh of power produces 85 g per kWh -- 4.5 times* cleaner. Furthermore, power is dramatically more expensive in Germany -- in 2022, a kWh of power was €0.3279 in Germany vs.€0.2086 in France.

*Furthermore, there are basic errors here. Nuclear power doesn't need pumped hydro -- literally Germany has more pumped hydro than France, despite not having the "Alps" etc