“Germany is the first country in the world to show they can uncouple growth from burning of fossil fuels,” said Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank. “This is the main task of our generation.”

Not that the efforts have been without challenges. As Germany has accelerated its phaseout of nuclear power, it has at times relied too heavily on coal-fired power plants, and it will need to make deeper cuts to its yearly carbon emissions if it is to meet the goal of a 40 percent reduction from 1990 levels by 2020, a target that the government set for itself. (The European Union, including Germany, is committed to reaching that same goal as a bloc by 2030, as part of the Paris deal.)

High-power transmission lines to carry wind-generated power from turbines in the north to factories in the south have run up against not-in-my-backyard resistance, and the automobile industry’s foot-dragging on curbing emissions recently has been laid bare by American regulators who caught Volkswagen cheating on its numbers for diesel cars.