UN: Time running out for fossil fuel reduction

World powers are running out of time to cut their use of high-polluting fossil fuels and stay below agreed limits on global warming, a draft UN study to be approved this week shows.

Government officials and leading climate scientists will meet in Berlin from today to review the 29-page draft that also estimates the shift to low-carbon energies would cost between 2% and 6% of world output by 2050.

It says nations will have to impose drastic curbs on their still rising greenhouse gas emissions to keep a promise made by almost 200 countries in 2010 to limit global warming to less than 2C over pre-industrial times.