Renewable versus fossil-free electricity: guarantees of origin, residual mix and a hall claim

Reading order

Start with Energimyndigheten’s guarantees-of-origin page. It says a guarantee shows the type of energy source and whether the energy is, for example, renewable or fossil-free. Producers receive one guarantee per produced megawatt-hour. Guarantees are issued only in electronic form and can be sold on an open market. Energimyndigheten issues the guarantees and keeps the national register. Energimarknadsinspektionen supervises origin labelling toward customers. Those are two authority roles. They are not a hall meter.

Then open Ei’s origin-labelling page and the residual-mix page. Origin labelling must show the mix sold — renewable, nuclear or fossil — and the environmental impact as carbon dioxide and radioactive waste specified as used nuclear fuel. A supplier can cancel guarantees from its own plants or buy guarantees and cancel them when it sells to the end customer. Cancellation is the matching step. The residual mix is what remains after guaranteed-origin electricity has been subtracted. Ei publishes that mix each year. The 2025 table on the residual-mix page is 57.81 percent renewable, 9.50 percent nuclear and 32.68 percent fossil, with 208.6 grams of CO₂ per kilowatt-hour and 0.00028 grams of used nuclear fuel per kilowatt-hour. Those cells are a national residual mix. They are not EcoDataCenter Falun and not Meta Luleå.

Then read EIFS 2025:4. The 12 December 2025 Ei news page says the new regulations enter into force on 1 February 2026. The residual mix used for ordinary origin-labelling updates, due by 1 July 2026, must be the Swedish residual mix based on the previous year’s (2025) electricity production, not the older Nordic residual mix. All suppliers must use the residual-mix figures published on Ei’s website. Compared with the Nordic residual mix, Ei says the Swedish residual mix contains less carbon dioxide but more used nuclear fuel. That comparison is about the labelling base. It is not a hall claim.

Only then open operator and procurement sentences. Energimyndigheten’s electricity-system page describes Swedish electricity production as almost entirely fossil-free, with hydropower and nuclear contributing the largest share, followed by wind and bioenergy. That is a national production sentence. Meta’s Luleå page describes local hydropower. Fortum’s 22 June 2026 notice says a 10 megawatt power-purchase agreement in bidding area SE3 for 2026–2030 will supply EcoDataCenter Falun with fossil-free electricity from Fortum hydropower on the Dalälven through local guarantees of origin. Those are three different objects: a national mix, an operator siting sentence, and a dated PPA. They do not replace each other.

• Guarantees of origin first — one GO per MWh; renewable or fossil-free is a labelled attribute.
• Then Ei origin labelling and the 2025 residual-mix table.
• Then EIFS 2025:4 — Swedish residual mix from 1 February 2026, ordinary update by 1 July 2026.
• Operator hydropower sentences and the Fortum–Falun PPA last — different instruments.

What the instruments actually separate

Renewable and fossil-free are not the same cell on the guarantees-of-origin page. Energimyndigheten writes that a guarantee shows the energy source and whether the energy is, for example, renewable or fossil-free. Nuclear can sit in a fossil-free sentence and still sit outside a renewable sentence. A slide that treats the two words as synonyms has already left the authority page. The residual-mix table keeps three columns: renewable, nuclear and fossil. It does not collapse nuclear into renewable.

A guarantee is a tradable electronic certificate. The producer can sell it. A supplier that wants to sell wind electricity can cancel its own wind guarantees or buy wind guarantees and cancel them when it sells to the customer. Cancellation is the matching step that keeps one megawatt-hour of claimed origin against one cancelled guarantee. Electricity that is sold without that matching step falls into the residual mix. The residual mix is therefore not ”the Swedish grid.” It is the leftover after guaranteed-origin volumes have been removed.

EIFS 2025:4 changes the leftover’s geography. Until the new regulations, suppliers used a Nordic residual mix. From 1 February 2026 the calculation base is Swedish. Ei says that makes the leftover more relevant to electricity produced and used in Sweden, and that the Swedish leftover has less carbon dioxide and more used nuclear fuel than the Nordic leftover. The ordinary customer-information update that must use the new base is due by 1 July 2026 and rests on 2025 production. A hall brochure printed in 2025 under the Nordic leftover is not automatically rewritten by this page into the 2025 Swedish table.

National production language is a fourth object. Energimyndigheten’s electricity-system page says Swedish production is almost entirely fossil-free. That sentence is about generation in the country. It is not a connection offer in Staffanstorp, not a cancelled guarantee for a named hall, and not the 208.6 gram residual-mix factor. Meta’s Luleå hydropower sentence is an operator siting description. It does not publish a cancelled-guarantee volume and it does not publish a current site megawatt.

A power-purchase agreement is a fifth object. Fortum’s 22 June 2026 notice is a 10 megawatt SE3 contract for 2026–2030 with local guarantees of origin from Dalälven hydropower, written as fossil-free electricity for EcoDataCenter Falun, in a context where CoreWeave is establishing advanced compute. Ten megawatts is a procurement volume. It is not the 41 megawatt balance-sheet sentence, not the 65 megawatt later campus sentence, and not the 80 megawatt available-power page. Other guides already keep those Falun rows apart. This page only needs the reader to see that a fossil-free PPA is not a renewable residual-mix cell and not a national production slogan.

What named primary sources show

Energimyndigheten’s guarantees-of-origin page shows the one-guarantee-per-megawatt-hour rule, the renewable-or-fossil-free attribute, the open market, and the split of roles with Ei. Ei’s origin-labelling and residual-mix pages show the three-way mix, the 2025 residual-mix table, and the 208.6 gram CO₂ factor. The 12 December 2025 Ei news page shows EIFS 2025:4 in force from 1 February 2026, the move from Nordic to Swedish residual mix, and the 1 July 2026 ordinary update. Energimyndigheten’s electricity-system page shows the almost-entirely-fossil-free national production sentence. Meta Luleå shows a hydropower siting sentence. Fortum’s 22 June 2026 notice shows a 10 megawatt SE3 fossil-free hydropower PPA with local guarantees of origin. None of those rows is a hall meter for every Swedish campus.

A matrix instead of a green score

Draw instruments in rows and evidence in columns. A guarantee, a residual mix, a national production sentence, an operator hydropower sentence and a dated PPA are different rows. Empty cells stay empty. SE1 to SE4 are not a column that turns a leftover mix into spare megawatts.

Common misreads

The first misread is to treat renewable and fossil-free as one word. The guarantees page keeps them as examples of different attributes. Nuclear can be fossil-free in that wording and still sit in the residual-mix nuclear column. The second is to treat the residual mix as the electricity that physically flows into a hall. Physical flow and cancelled origin are different files. The third is to paste 208.6 grams of CO₂ onto Meta Luleå or Falun as if the residual mix were that hall’s meter.

The fourth is to treat the almost-entirely-fossil-free national production sentence as leftover megawatts in every county. Bidding areas do not allocate spare power. The fifth is to rewrite Falun’s 41, 65 or 80 megawatt rows as the 10 megawatt PPA. The sixth is to treat EIFS 2025:4 as if every older Nordic leftover sentence became false on 1 February 2026. The regulation changes the base for the next ordinary update. It does not silently rewrite every earlier brochure on this page.

What to ask next

If a brief says a hall is renewable, ask whether the sentence is a cancelled guarantee, a residual mix, a national production slogan, an operator siting claim, or a dated PPA. If it says fossil-free, ask whether nuclear is inside the sentence. If it quotes 208.6 grams, ask which residual-mix year and whether anyone attached it to a named hall.

Then open the energy-efficiency page, the electricity-costs page and the reporting page. Origin labelling is not PUE, not a 500 kilowatt filing, and not a connection offer.

1. Renewable and fossil-free kept as separate attributes.
2. Residual-mix table labelled leftover, not ”the grid.”
3. EIFS 2025:4 date and Swedish-versus-Nordic base named.
4. PPA megawatts kept off campus megawatt rows.
5. No invented hall CO₂ factor from 208.6 g/kWh.

What this does and does not prove

This page proves that Swedish guarantees of origin can carry a renewable or a fossil-free attribute, that Ei publishes a 2025 residual mix with three columns and a 208.6 gram CO₂ factor, that EIFS 2025:4 moves labelling to a Swedish leftover from 1 February 2026, and that a 10 megawatt Fortum–Falun PPA is a dated procurement instrument, not a campus total.

It does not prove a hall’s cancelled-guarantee volume. It does not prove that residual-mix grams attach to Luleå or Falun. It does not prove leftover megawatts in SE1 to SE4. It does not treat renewable and fossil-free as one word.

Empty cells stay empty. Until a later primary source names a cancelled volume, a measurement year and a hall, the green sentence stays an instrument, not a meter.