May 7 (Bloomberg) -- Capturing and storing carbon-dioxide gas is an ``important solution'' to global warming, said Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of a United Nations panel of scientists who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore.

Burning fossil fuels such as coal generates CO2, the main pollutant blamed for global warming. Carbon capture and storage has potential to help the world cope with CO2 emissions as energy demand grows, though ``much more effort'' is needed to get the technology widely adopted, Pachauri told participants today at a conference in Berlin via a live video feed from India.

Industries and countries around the world that produce or use a lot of energy, especially Canada, Australia and Norway, are looking at ways to capture CO2 gas and store it underground, an experimental and costly process. Environmental group Greenpeace said May 5 that carbon capture was a ``scam'' because it's an unproven technology that aims to extend the use of fossil fuels.

``I know some people think carbon capture and storage is immoral and so on, but this is a very limited view,'' Pachauri said. ``We need to use everything at our disposal.''

Fitting coal-fired power plants with technology to separate and collect carbon doubles the cost of generating one unit of power in some cases, Juergen-Friedrich Hake, a researcher at the Juelich Institute in western Germany, said in a presentation at the conference. Costs to transport and inject the gas into underground rock formations is comparatively ``cheap,'' he said, without providing details.

Financing for infrastructure such as pipelines is one of the most important factors to speed up the commercialization of the technology, Hake said.

Shell, Alstom

Companies such as Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Europe's biggest oil producer with net income of $31.3 billion last year, have requested government support to help pay for development of the technology. Alstom SA, the largest coal-fired power plant maker, said in January that the European Union should budget as much as 1 billion euros ($1.5 billion) for each demonstration plant the bloc wants to meet its emission-reductions goal.

Some companies have already begun pilot projects to test the technology. StatoilHydro ASA, Norway's biggest oil producer, is testing a system to store 750,000 metric tons of CO2 annually from its Snohvit natural-gas field. That's equivalent to taking about 250,000 cars off the road.

``Carbon capture and storage is a scam,'' Emily Rochon, a climate and energy campaigner at Greenpeace International, said in a statement on the group's Web site. ``Governments and businesses need to reduce their emissions, not search for excuses for continuing to burn coal.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Jeremy van Loon in Berlin at jvanloon@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: May 7, 2008 08:52 EDT