Swedish news: Daily newspaper slags off oil commission.

Comments on the oil commission’s report have been very few in the Swedish media. Perhaps because it was released during the holiday period or because the issue is so complex, that in criticising the report you show how much you do not know. SvD, the right wing Swedish national daily newspaper, however, takes the Oil Commission to task for “giving us a vision of wood-burning”.

In its editorial from 11 July, former Editor-in-chief Hans Bergström denounces the Oil Commissions six months of work as failing to deliver to a standard of what would normally be expected of a government report.
In short he says the report fails to address: - financial dimensions including budgets, investments, subsidies etc.
- the present increase in transport Sweden is experiencing.
- how research budgets will be prioritised – by for example reducing medical research.
- the disadvantages and benefits of investing in bio-fuel alternatives against for example, stimulating exports.

Perhaps the most scathing criticism comes as he rails against the idea that Swedish crops and forestry products should be converted to fuel. As he puts it, these raw materials should be processed (at least into food) and turned into value-added products, not just burnt.

The criticism, however correct, itself begs the question of how an energy intensive society is going to get its energy to do all that value adding and exporting activity when oil supply shortfall drives energy prices sky-high. But then the commission did not address that either.