Tackling global warming need not cost the Earth, a panel of UN scientists said today.

In the third in a series of reports, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said that keeping the rise in temperatures to within 2C would cost only 0.12 per cent of annual gross domestic product if governments exploited new technologies to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

“It’s a low premium to pay to reduce the risk of major climate damage,” Bill Hare, a Greenpeace adviser who co-authored the report, told Reuters news agency after the culmination of marathon negotiations which ran over their four-day schedule.

“If we continue to do what we are doing now, we are in deep trouble,” added Ogunlade Davidson, co-chair of the IPCC, which includes experts from some 120 nations.

“This report is all about solutions to climate change."

To keep within the 2C threshold that scientists say is needed to stave off disastrous changes to the world’s climate, emissions of carbon dioxide need to drop between 50 and 85 per cent by 2050, the report said.

However, technological advances - particularly in producing and using energy more efficiently - meant such targets were within reach. The reprot highlighted the use of nuclear, solar and wind power, more energy-efficient buildings and lighting, as well as capturing and storing carbon dioxide spewed from coal-fired power stations and oil and gas rigs.

The panel also said for the first time that lifestyle changes could help fight global warming. It gave no examples, but the IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri said his personal suggestions included turning down the thermostat and eating less red meat, which could reduce animal methane emissions. “These are lifestyle measures but you are not going to give up anything and you might gain,” he said.

The IPCC report presented a best-case scenario of limiting global warming to 2.0-2.4C (3.6-4.3F), generally recognised as the threshold when the most extreme ravages of climate change will begin.

Ramping up use of new technologies that do not emit greenhouse gases, increasing energy efficiency and other methods to achieve this target would shave less than 0.12 per cent off world economic growth each year. To keep global warming in the best-case range, nations have to make sure that greenhouse gases - blamed for most of the world’s rising temperature - must start declining by 2015.

The report said that greenhouse emissions would have to be cut to between 50 and 85 per cent of year 2000 levels by 2050, and urged the greater use of renewable energy sources such as solar, wind and hydro-power.

But throughout the week, delegates taking part in the closed-door talks said, there was strong opposition to emissions caps led by China, which fears a slowdown in its surging economic growth.

Despite the haggling, however, negotiators and environmental groups insisted that the final report had not been watered down for political reasons. “It came out much better than we thought,” said Stephan Singer, a climate and energy specialist from WWF. “This is a victory of science over the fossil fuel industry (and) economic sceptics."

The report is the third and last from the IPCC this year, after the first two looked into the evidence and looming devastating impacts of global warming.

Nuclear power, which was one of the points of debate, was also highlighted as one option global policymakers should consider. Another important element was making people and industry pay for using fossil fuels - helping to reduce the relative cost of renewable energies.

In some cases, the panel said, technology could bring substantial benefits, such as cutting health costs by tackling pollution. Even changing planting times for rice or managing cattle and sheep flocks better could cut emissions of methane, another powerful greenhouse gas.

The IPCC's two previous reports painted a grim picture of human-induced global warming causing more hunger, droughts, heatwaves and rising sea levels which would drown low-lying islands.

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