"We need to bring about some quite Draconian cuts in CO2 emissions," he added on the margins of the British Association for the Advancement of Science annual festival.

Chadwick said the technique of pumping carbon dioxide back into the earth in a manner that prevented it re-entering the atmosphere had been applied and perfected at the Sleipner gas field in the North Sea over the past few years.

Operator, Norwegian oil company Statoil, had already injected some five million tonnes of carbon dioxide into a saline aquifer about one kilometre below the sea bed.

Time delayed, three dimensional seismic surveys had shown the CO2 was spreading gradually through the vast subterranean reservoir where it was being contained by an impermeable cap of shale and clay.

He said that even if only one percent of the aquifer's storage volume was used to store carbon dioxide it would represent one year's output of CO2 from the equivalent of 900 coal-fired or 2,300 gas-fired 500 megawatt power stations.

Chadwick said the technique did involve a cost which would obviously rise in the case of a power station and where no suitable geological structure was in the immediate vicinity.

"It is expensive at the moment, but a lot of research is being done to find out how to reduce the costs," he said, suggesting that exhausted oil and gas fields might provide useful storage areas.

He also acknowledged that CO2 sequestration was by its nature only an intermediate measure to help save the environment from the poisonous emission of greenhouse gases while renewable energy sources were developed.

"Carbon sequestration is viewed as an interim measure for the next 50-60 years to effect the major cuts we need to achieve," Chadwick said.