Germany has led the way with policies to transform the electric power system from coal and gas to renewables. Year by year, as a result of those policies, the power sector in Germany is changing, and the country is well on track to have a completely decarbonized sector by 2050. Where they have led, other countries have started to follow. These have included the United States and China, as well as a number of other countries in Europe.

A large share of the financial cost is now behind us, to a large extent because of Germany's initiative. Indeed, there are now credible estimates that the remaining actions will come at no net financial cost. Photovoltaics (PV) does still need to become a little less expensive to be able to compete in increasingly more places, and offshore wind and concentrated solar power (CSP) do still need generous financial support, at least for a few years. But the past twenty years of growth in onshore wind and PV have left both technologies in an extremely attractive position. For several years now, global investment in these two technologies has surpassed investment in fossil fuel generation.

A decarbonized electric power system will play an increasingly important role in a decarbonized society more generally as electricity begins to play a larger role as the energy carrier for both transportation and heating. It is also potentially the hardest piece of the puzzle to solve because of the difficulty associated with storing electricity and hence making the system reliable. But it is, still, just one piece of the puzzle. We still need to make a changeover from gasoline and diesel cars and trucks to electric ones. We still need to transform the process of heating and those industries where CO2 production is intense. Finally, we need to scale up the production of biofuels at exactly the same time as we slow down and then halt the processes of tropical deforestation.