The fight against climate change would not be won unless a "revolution" in the use of existing low-carbon technology, and numerous new inventions took hold, said the Global Climate Network (GCN) in its report released on Wednesday.

Entitled ‘Breaking through on technology', the report was released to coincide with the Group of Eight (G8) summit, which is currently under way in Italy, and sought to analyse how to overcome the barriers to the development and wide deployment of low-carbon technology.

The report highlights the importance of technology, and states that finance goes hand-in-hand with technology development and transfer, particularly since most low-carbon technologies required high up-front investment and could be more costly to deploy than carbon-intensive alternatives.

"Knowledge and capacity are as important as equipment," said the GCN, and pointed out that intellectual property rights needed careful attention.

The report also noted that more keenly focused government policies were desperately needed, including regulating on carbon standards and providing clear, targeted incentives and tax breaks.

In its report the GCN made a number of recommendations, which included: putting technology at the heart of climate negotiations; creating focused incentives for technology deployment; linking technology and finance in international talks; developing national low-carbon technology strategies; giving and urgent boost to research and development initiatives; piloting joint innovation for future technologies; rewarding technology risk takers with string intellectual property; and developing new technology collaboratively.

Success at the climate summit in Copenhagen in December, depended on reaching consensus on several divisive issues - one of these is technology.

"Low-carbon innovations were said to have the potential to improve lives as well as cut greenhouse gas emissions, but this will be squandered unless governments step up and lead," stated GCN.

The GCN, was established in 2008, and is an alliance of nine think tanks in countries viewed as key to successful international action on climate change. Its secretariat is based at the Institute for Public Policy Research in the UK.