"The agreement concerns chemical processes that can capture carbon dioxide from the process industry and emissions from coal and gas powered power stations," it said.

"Within these sectors, it is estimated that the 4,000 largest facilities account for more than 40 percent of man-made carbon dioxide emissions globally," it said.

Norway is the world's number five oil exporter and Western Europe's biggest gas exporter.

SOLVit will group Aker Clean Carbon, SINTEF, which is an independent research organisation, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and Norway's state-run Gassnova.

Aker Clean Carbon is a venture owned 70 percent by Aker ASA and 30 percent by engineering group Aker Solutions.

Many countries are trying to develop technology to capture carbon dioxide emissions and entomb them in porous rocks below ground to slow climate change. Costs of the technology are high.

The partnership said that international energy companies had been invited to take part.

"Norway will be among the few countries with a complete set of laboratories in this area, from testing in the lab to pilot runs at semi-industrial scale," it said.

A first research phase to 2010 would be used to test chemical solutions based on amines, which have the ability to cleanse carbon dioxide. "The aim is to come up with a process facility for carbon dioxide that can operate on half the energy consumption of today's processes," said Jan Roger Bjerkstrand, chief executive of Aker Clean Carbon.

-- For Reuters latest environment blogs click on: http://blogs.reuters.com/environment/ (Editing by William Hardy,