But for certain is that Germany will start investing, even more then now already, in decentralised "small scale" power-generation. Such as wind, solar, heat, CHP (often nat-gas-fueled) and so on.
Germany and Denmark already "own" most knowledge and techniques for development and maintainance of wind- and solar-power. As of now, this is a serious and highly profitable business in .de and .dk. For example, in .nl (Where I am from) we buy all our windmills (and parts and knowledge) from Germany.
Whether it is a populist, bad argumented decision or not, Germanies economy is going to benefit from this shift big time.
A key factor here is the availability of feed-in tariffs via the Renewable Energy Sources Act which has been a big incentive for the development, manufacture and deployment of renewables.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed-in_tariff#Germany.27s_Rene...
That gas is probably going to come from Russia, so Putin must be smiling.
I personally don't believe this story until the last plant is dismantled. The government promised to abandon nuclear power years ago, just to break this promise some years later.
[1] http://www.berlinonline.de/berliner-zeitung/archiv/.bin/dump...
