Comment by renhanxue | Hacker News Reader

Comment by renhanxue | Hacker News Reader

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I mean, you can call it a "mountain" of greenwashing but to me it looks more like a mole hill. Total Swedish electricity production is typically 160 to 165 TWh per year and total consumption is usually between 135 and 145 TWh.

In 2025, the net export was about 33 TWh. Gross import from Germany, Poland and Lithuania, including transit to other countries, was 1 TWh. So, imported power from countries with coal power plants was less than 1% of total consumption, and the amount of fossil free power exported was more than 30 times greater than the amount of (potentially) fossil power imported. 1-2% fossil energy in the mix is to me not really significant, and especially not considering how much fossil free power is exported.

Sources:

Statistics Sweden table of power import and export: https://www.scb.se/hitta-statistik/statistik-efter-amne/ener...

Basic information about Swedish power generation: https://www.energiforetagen.se/energifakta/elsystemet/produk...

I think it's huge greenwashing to claim to not have coal power, but just import it when needed. What practical difference is that to having coal power domestically? That's just saying you recycle all plastic, only to send it to the third world to dump in rivers.

So I think it's untrue to say that Sweden doesn't rely on coal power. Without coal power it'd have regular blackouts. I rely on being able to take a breath every couple of seconds. If I only get an annual average of a breath every few seconds, I'll die.

One could show great generation and net export statistics with a sufficiently large batteryless solar installation, and still import coal power every night and cloudy day.

What is true, but can easily imply an incorrect conclusion, is that Sweden's very good in being self sufficient in clean power generation statistically. Yes, very much true. But it's largely due to geography, and not merely something to replicate. Sweden has way more viable places where hydro could be installed, than most countries (though where economical and otherwise acceptable, it already has). And it's sparsely populated; Sweden is bigger than the UK, but with one seventh the population. So if the implication is that "if we can do it, so can you" then that's false.

Luckily the political wind (including population opinion) has started to turn in favor of nuclear power, again. Maybe everything can be solar in 100 years, but we can't have 100 more years of coal.

> So I think it's untrue to say that Sweden doesn't rely on coal power. Without coal power it'd have regular blackouts.

The european grid is interconnected so it's basically all fungible. But it's not the case that there would be blackouts, since the price mechanism is used to match production, demand and return on production investments. So policy decisions to ramp down fossil generation result in investment decisions to new non fossil generation capacity.

> The european grid is interconnected so it's basically all fungible.

This is the point I'm making. It's not a counter point, it's exactly the point I'm making. Sweden "has" a bunch of coal plants, just located in Germany and Poland. This allows Sweden to skip planning for exactly what renewable is bad at.

Otherwise this is like saying "antibiotics are completely unnecessary because 99.99% of the time you don't need them, and when I do need them I just get them from a pharmacy". Right… so you do need and rely on them.

But Sweden also has a geographic electricity transportation problem. Electricity generation exists where (most) consumers are not. And this is also due to the MUCH more limited flexibility of renewables, especially hydro. Could easily be cheaper to get coal power in the south instead of hydro "shipped" from way up north. Hell, sometimes electricity in the north has a negative price.

Sweden is a good local example of why we also can't just power all of Europe from some solar panels in Sahara. Except instead it's hydro way up north.

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