By Andreas Moeser and Markus Wacket
BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's ruling conservatives have delayed voting on a draft law on carbon dioxide storage because of concerns about it, but the country's economy minister said he believed the bill would ultimately pass.
A spokeswoman for the parliamentary group of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives said the group will reconsider the carbon capture and storage (CCS) law again in two weeks.
In the meantime, the economy and environment ministries will attempt to resolve questions about the bill, which has already given rise to public concerns, she added. Conservatives had been scheduled to vote on the legislation on Tuesday.
The CCS law would pave the way for further developing technology aimed at cutting pollution from coal-burning power plants, by holding CO2 indefinitely in underground storage facilities.
The coalition has spent months wrangling over rules to regulate the efforts of utilities such as E.ON, RWE and Vattenfall Europe to test and install the technology early enough for large-scale commercial use after 2020.
Speedy progress of the law is needed to allow these firms to meet timetables for pilot plants ahead of full commercial production planned for 2020, and to ensure that CO2 taken from the plants can be piped into suitable stores by that date.
Germany derives 50 percent of its power from coal but without CCS will not be able to keep this up in coming years, as stringent EU laws aimed at discouraging CO2 emissions set rising financial penalties on conventional coal burning.
Economy Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, a member of Merkel's conservative bloc, told Reuters he was confident the outstanding issues could be resolved in two weeks.
"As a result I'm very confident that the bill can be passed by the Bundestag, even if time is getting short," he said.
Party sources had told Reuters earlier that the conservatives were likely to oppose the bill, which could have killed it. The Bundestag lower house of parliament had been due to vote on it on Friday.
"The CCS technology is still not widely accepted," said a source from Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU), who rule in coalition with the center-left Social Democrats (SPD).
(Additional reporting by Vera Eckert; Writing by Sarah Marsh and Dave Graham, Editing by Peter Blackburn)
