By Alister Doyle and Wojciech Moskwa OSLO, March 14 (Reuters) - Norway may fall short of its goal of being first to develop technology for burying greenhouse gases from power plants, a drive Oslo has likened to the 1960s space race, Environment Minister Erik Solheim said on Friday. Solheim told Reuters that Norway, the world's number five oil exporter, was planning to spend billions of dollars on ways to capture heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the exhaust of gas-fired power plants and entomb it to combat global warming. Oslo has long said it wants to lead a global race for carbon capture. Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg has even likened Norway's push to the Apollo programme that put U.S. astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the Moon in July 1969. But Solheim said efforts focused on coal-fired power plants in countries such as the United States, Britain, Germany, Japan or China were likely to succeed before Norway's research focused on plants run on natural gas. "We have coined this as our Moon landing project. But when Mr. Stoltenberg and I are landing on the Moon, someone else will be there already, based on coal," Solheim said. "If the carbon capture and storage is developed, it would be of world significance ... however, I think that we will most likely have a first in other countries because it seems to be easier to do it from coal than from gas," he said. The U.N. Climate Panel says carbon burial, perhaps in disused oil and gas fields, could be more important in fighting global warming this century than a shift to renewable energies such as solar or wind power. HEAD START "The real significance is to develop the technology," he said. Any company or nation which develops the technology will get a head start in a business that could be worth hundreds of billions of dollars to help head off more droughts, heatwaves and rising seas likely to be caused by climate change. Norway's 2008 budget includes 1.13 billion Norwegian crowns ($221.6 million) for carbon capture research. The Apollo missions cost more than $130 billion. Norway's future spending "will at least be billions of dollars," Solheim said. The U.N. Climate Panel said prices for emitting carbon dioxide would have to be stable over a long period at $25-$30 before carbon burial is economic. Prices for 2008 in the European Union market were around 22.4 euros ($34.92) on Friday. Norway plans to make its economy "carbon neutral" by 2030, partly by burying greenhouse gases and by buying emissions quotas abroad. But Solheim said Norway was struggling to find investments in developing countries under the Clean Development Mechanism, part of the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol for curbing emissions of greenhouse gases. Norway has said it plans to buy 30-35 million tonnes of emissions rights for about 500 million euros and is seeking submissions by March 31. Solheim, a Socialist whose party is a junior partner in the three-party Labour-led government, said Oslo would like to invest most in Africa, the poorest continent. "It's difficult to find enough good projects, which have any aspect of poverty alleviation ... and an aspect of technology transfer," he said. "Outside South Africa there is hardly any project big enough in Africa to qualify." (For Reuters latest environment blogs click on: http://blogs.reuters.com/environment/) (Editing by Janet Lawrence)
A young Buddhist nun at Arya Tara School in Kathmandu tries to adjust her robes as her colleagues from Tibet take part in anti-China demonstrations March 14, 2008. The Tibetan refugees ...
