Probably fairly equal - at least I haven't found any big difference in cpu consumption between the two, which is the main power (and thus battery life) drawing mechanism.
You'll probably save more battery power by making your screen less bright and not using wireless when you don't need it than switching desktop, at least between KDE and Gnome. Of course you can turn off some bells and whistles - like 3d effects, if any - to decrease cpu usage and thus battery consumption.
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