More than one hundred international firms have signed a so-called ‘carbon price communique’ sent to Brussels, asking policymakers to focus on a “clear, transparent, unambiguous” global price for carbon.

The businesses reason that an ambitious carbon price is essential to deliver regulatory certainty and drive low carbon investment.

A global carbon price, the argument goes, would mean no one nation bears a harsher burden of cutting emissions.

Firms who have signed the communiqué include French supplier EDF Energy, the banks Swiss Re, Aviva and Lloyds Banking Group, consumer goods group Unilever, British oil giant Shell and South Korean power plant builder Doosan Power.

Written by the Prince of Wales’ Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change,  the firms backing it clearly want to get their message across to world leaders before they meet at the UN’s climate summit in Doha later this month.

Graham van’t Hoff, Chairman of Shell UK said: “Emissions trading schemes have huge potential to deliver real change. Putting a price on CO2 emissions should mean that the lowest-cost CO2 emission reduction measures are implemented first and that all measures are used. Governments at the UN climate conference should focus on carbon pricing as a key policy objective.”

The communique points to the progress made in some advanced developing countries and regions which are starting to bring in cap and trade programmes and calls for such measures to be expanded.