The U.S. Energy Department and the University of North Dakota entered a two-year agreement to curb carbon emissions from fossil fuels, a state senator said.

Research at the university campus will be aimed at lowering the cost of carbon capture and storage, a development presented to Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz when he visited North Dakota last year, Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., said.

A 2013 report from the International Energy Agency said more investments are needed in carbon sequestration programs like CCS, describing them as essential to reducing greenhouse gases in a world still "hooked on fossil fuels."

Supporters hold out CCS as a way to advance a low-carbon economy at a time when nations are working on ways to keep global temperatures from increasing more than 2 degrees Celsius. An expensive abatement effort, environmental groups say the technology only delays an inevitable switch to renewable energy.

A 2012 study at Princeton University found that while CCS is one of the few abatement efforts that can reduce emissions and allow for continued production, the drilling processes needed to extract reserves from shale may interrupt some of the geological characteristics necessary for CCS development.

North Dakota is the No. 2 oil producer in the nation, producing 1.17 million barrels of oil per day in February, the last full month for which data are available. More than 90 percent of new production comes from the Bakken shale reserve in the state.

Continental Resources, one of the largest Bakken leaseholders in the state, reported to the state health department about 1 barrel of produced water, which contains a hazardous brine, was released into the tributary of a river in western North Dakota.