The meeting came as a report from the US Energy Department found that action to curb greenhouse gas emissions would have only a very small effect on the US economy.

Stavros Dimas, the European Union's environment commissioner, said: "Both climate change and sustainable development are top priorities. [It is] important that we achieve sustainable development and provide all the people in the world with decent living conditions."

Mr. Dimas was joined by Lucien Lux of Luxembourg, which holds the EU presidency, and Lord Whitty of the UK, which will take over the presidency in July. The meeting, with Paula Dobriansky, undersecretary of state for global affairs, and other senior US officials, took place in the middle of the UN's Sustainable Development Commission annual meeting in New York, which ends on Friday.

Previous talks between the EU and the US have led to little more than bland statements agreeing on the importance of developing new technology to combat global warming. While the EU is one of the strongest proponents of the UN-brokered Kyoto protocol on climate change, the US has explicitly rejected the treaty.

But this time, the EU had a new weapon: the report from the US Energy Information Administration, which found that reducing emissions would cost much less than opponents of emissions reduction had said.

The EIA analysed a set of recommendations made by the National Commission on Energy Policy late last year. It found that reducing US greenhouse gas emissions by 4 per cent by 2015 and by 7 per cent by 2025, in accordance with the NCEP's recommendations, would cost 0.15 per cent of gross domestic product.

That would be the equivalent of $78 per year to each US househould by 2025. Electricity prices would rise by less than 5 per cent more by 2025 than they are estimated to rise without the pressure of emissions reductions.

These reductions are somewhat less than the cuts the US would be likely to be required to make in the same period under the Kyoto protocol. But the costs of Kyoto would still be considerably less than 0.5 per cent of GDP using these calculations.

Under the NCEP's recommendations the use of coal would increase 16 per cent by 2020, compared with predictions that if the US implemented Kyoto its use of coal would have to drop 70 per cent.

Electricity generators would be expected to invest in forms of coal-burning plant that released fewer greenhouse gas emissions.

Paul Bledsoe, director of communications and strategy at the NCEP, said: "This is the difference between political feasibility and political infeasibility. The US is not going to adopt a plan that would reduce coal use by 70 per cent."