Dec. 10 (Bloomberg) -- United Nations negotiators dropped plans to spur the use of devices that capture carbon dioxide emissions from power plants in developing countries and pump it underground for storage.

Members of the UN Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice couldn’t agree on whether to support the experimental technology for curbing greenhouse gases, according to a document handed today to delegates meeting in Poznan, Poland, for climate-change talks.

“A few countries took a very hard line,” Andreas Arvanitakis, senior analyst at Point Carbon, the Oslo-based energy and carbon-markets consultant, said in an interview in Poznan. “Though it’s still very much on the agenda of governments and the energy sector, particularly in the U.K., China and OPEC.”

The decision means the unproven technology may be pushed aside in UN talks on how to foster power generation without releasing CO2, the main gas blamed for global warming. More than 10,000 delegates, scientists and environmental advocates have gathered in the western Polish city since Dec. 1 to help lay the groundwork for a new treaty to stem climate change to be signed a year from now.

The International Energy Agency this week called for 20 carbon-capture projects to be built. The technology to store industrial CO2 underground indefinitely is vital to the UN’s plan to halve worldwide emissions of global warming gases by 2050, the IEA has said. The devices primarily aim to remove almost all CO2 emissions from burning coal, the most polluting fossil fuel.

Add ‘Clean-Coal?’

The UN scientific team of negotiators had discussed adding the “clean-coal” technology to a list of UN-approved methods to limit the release of heat-trapping greenhouse gases. Delegates in Poland also have considered putting nuclear power on that list.

The two discarded proposals would have let industrialized nations or companies earn credits for reducing their emissions if they paid for carbon-capture plants in developing nations. UN rules already allow such pollution-offset investments in projects such as trapping methane gas from landfills or building wind-energy turbines in developing nations.

If approved, a carbon-capture plan could have taken effect even before the new treaty is signed. Now UN support may not possible until after 2013, Arvanitakis said. “In the short to medium term, it may be only individual governments and companies that find a way to set up pilot projects,” he said.

Only companies in developed countries have UN-regulated limits for CO2 and other greenhouse gases, enforceable under the existing Kyoto global-warming treaty through 2012. Polluters may trim output domestically or, if it’s cheaper, do so in poorer countries using the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism, or CDM, a process for carrying out the offsets.

Options Discarded

One option discarded this week would have allowed unlimited use of the technology. Another would have held to eight the number of carbon-capture projects approved under CDM by 2012.

The European Union said a test project should be conducted before further plants are built.

Using carbon capture in developing countries would only serve to export to poorer nations the risk of seepage of the carbon dioxide from underground chambers, Damien Demailly, climate campaigner for the environmental group WWF International, told reporters in Poznan this week.

To contact the reporter on this story: Alex Morales in Poznan, Poland, via amorales2@bloomberg.netTodd White in Poznan via twhite@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: December 10, 2008 13:54 EST