"Together we can leverage the investment that has been made on these first generations (of CCS technology) and hopefully speed up their commercial-scale development," Doug Lammie, the CCS supremo in the province of Alberta, told EurActiv.
Marlene Holzner, spokesperson for EU Energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger, said that this was already happening.
"The thing is that we do [that] already, because under the economic recovery programme we have pilot programmes in CCS," she told EurActiv. "These are projects to bring CCS to a stage where they mature [sic] for production."
But she declined to respond to further requests for clarification.
According to an official at the European Commission's energy department, the economic recovery programme solely applies to EU projects, and the EU is only in contact with Canada about CCS projects at present.
But where CCS is concerned, statements are not always to be taken at face value.
Lammie told EurActiv that joint EU-Canada work on the technology would enable both parties to make sure that it was developed "in a safe and responsible manner".
"We do put significant dollars into research and development in Alberta," he said.
Yet Alberta does not publicly fund a safety programme for CCS. The province is only slated to set up a Regulatory Framework Assessment this spring.
Alberta contains almost 85% of the world's bitumen oil sand reserves, which are heavy pollutants. They are also known as 'tar sands' due to their sticky, tar-like appearance.
Environmentalists complain that major oil companies often support CCS technology because its by-product, liquified carbon, can be pumped into depleted oil fields for storage, where it coincidentally assists in extracting remaining reserves.
But Lammie said that oil companies and consumers alike should be seen as "partners" in the fight against climate change.
"We have four projects that we are promoting," he said. "In three of them, the CO2 will be used for enhanced oil recovery. [In] the fourth one [carbon] will be stored and sequestered in a deep geological formation."
But he could not confirm what percentage of the carbon emitted from the oil sands would be captured by the new CCS technology.
"Significant dollars have been put up for renewables through our biofuels renewable initiative," he said. Since 2006, Alberta has provided grants worth CAN$239m to support bioenergy capacity and markets, around 10% of the figure spent on CCS.
Until 2008, Canada had been a strong supporter of the Kyoto Protocol, even if its greenhouse gas emissions increased rapidly in the decade that followed the agreement's signing.
But after the election of a fiscally conservative government in October 2008, the country's energy policy became more Kyoto-sceptic, and evolved towards the promotion of oil production - and CCS technology.
Now even this may be running into problems.
On 11 January, a local Canadian newspaper, the Whitehorse Star, reported about a farmers' study which found that the world's largest carbon capture and storage project run by the energy giant Cenovus was leaking carbon.
Farmers above the Weyburn oilfield in Saskatchewan, Canada, complained that their animals were dying and groundwater was being sent foaming to the surface as a result.
Cenovus had injected more than 13 million tonnes of carbon gas into the ground under their feet.
Farmers in Alberta may at least take solace from Doug Lammie's words about responsibility for leaks in their provice.
"In Alberta, in our situation, the companies are responsible to make sure that the CO2 is stored safely in the ground and that they're monitoring it appropriately," he said.
"If there was some type of leakage, then that company would be responsible for the reclamation of that."
To read the interview in full, please click here.
