Poland may sell at least 500 million tons of the equivalent of the carbon dioxide emission for the period of 2008 and 2012, Environment Minister Maciej Nowicki said on Monday.

"It was hard to specify the income on the transaction as all deals of the type were confidential," the minister was quoted as saying by Polish news agency PAP.

The Kyoto Protocol allows for selling rights to greenhouse gasses emissions to countries that do not use up their quota, including Poland.

Nowicki told a news conference in Warsaw that money acquired from the sale will be assigned for environment-protection related investments.

Poland produced less CO2 than envisaged by the Kyoto protocol and thus could sell it. Nowicki said that interested in the purchase of Polish rights to carbon dioxide emissions are Japan, Spain, Ireland and Portugal.

(Xinhua News Agency March 31, 2009)