It is actually totally different.
In the past the governments and the companies gave a shit about public opinion. Government money was used to research and build the nuclear industry. The electricity companies were huge monopolies. Currently we have four huge electricity producers which nicely divide the market into four regions. Competition? Zero. Government support? Max.
That brought us huge coal power plants whic brought a lot of environmental problems and a fleet of very expensive nuclear power plants.
Keep in mind that Germany is a relatively small country with little resources (mainly coal) and more than 80 million people.
Several decades ago the green movement was started to be a lobby against this block of politics and industry.
They stopped the expansion of nuclear power and the build up of even more powerful monopolies. They also stopped much of the coal power plants from polluting the country.
The voters brought the green party into power. First they were in regional parliaments, then in the Bundestag and eventually they were even part of the Bundesregierung (Schroeder/Fischer). The latest coup was that they lead the government in one of the Bundesländer where actually is one of the hearts of the German industry.
This happened because the voter placed them there. Over time also the conservative, right wing party, the CDU and its sister CSU, learned to support environmental policies. Part of their conservative ideology is the love to the country and to preserve its nature ('Wertkondervative'). Chancellor Merkel herself has a Dr. in Quantum Chemistry and she was responsible some years ago for the ministry which is concerned with environment and reactor safety. She is an expert on these topics.
What the voter now wants is to put more market, more competition into the energy landscape with a preference for renewable energy. You can see who is the opposition: the four huge electicity producers.
But now you can see the results. Renewable energy is up from 6% in 2000 to now over 20% share in electricity production.
But more important half of the new energy projects is privately owned or locally owned. We are bringing democracy and the local market to the energy system.
Before the grid was tightly controlled and only the big companies had access to it.
Now everyone can demand that his energy will be fed into the grid.
We tax energy use very high. This gives an added incentive to use less electricity and investing in modern technology pays back - if it uses less energy.
The 'Energiewende' is not a government project. It's the opposite. It took several decades of hard work of many citizens, a new party, ... to actually get the governments to support it.
It means lots of research, new industries, new companies, ... some will survive, some won't.
Much of the investment into new energy infrastructure is necessary anyway - because some of the infrastrucute is getting old - we direct more investments into renewable energy, than we had done in the past.