The Climate Leadership Council, which boasts 11 major corporate founding members, plans to introduce a $40 - a-ton carbon tax, which would increase ‘steadily over time’. The council includes former US Republican secretaries of state James A Baker III and George P Schultz.

Proceeds from the tax would be paid directly back to US citizens, monthly, via dividend checks.

Attempts to incentivise the development of renewable technology through subsidies has failed, the council argues, because costs increase as more renewables come online, and do little to discourage consumption of power through existing fossil fuel plants.

Instead, the tax will act as a ‘concrete, market-based solution’.

‘No other policy lever can match its economy-wide effects in changing investment decisions and individual behaviour,’ the council states in its plan.

The tax rate must increase gradually until emissions targets are met, and the loss of competitiveness for companies operating in the US would offset by a levy on operations outside of the jurisdiction, which it describes as ‘border adjustments’. These adjustments would encourage other economies to introduce their own levy.

‘Together, a carbon tax with border adjustments can help ensure that other countries follow suit, bringing us closer to a global solution.’

Regulation currently in place to monitor emissions should be scrapped, lowering red tape and putting the onus onto the market to drive change. ‘To build and sustain a bipartisan consensus for a regulatory rollback of this magnitude, the initial carbon tax rate should be set to exceed the emissions reductions of current regulations’ the council explained.

Individuals also endorsing the Climate Leadership Council include Stephen Hawking and climate policy speaker and politics author Ted Halstead.

Last month more than 62% of ExxonMobil shareholders voted for the world’s biggest oil company to be more transparent about the impact of climate change upon the business.

Climate change reporting and risk management is also a regular topic for discussion in the UK. The Bank of England has recently put together a report considering the issues that financial services and insurance must consider around the move to a lower carbon economy.

Last month a number of extractive businesses changed their approach to climate change reporting, following a formal complaint by ClientEarth to the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) that they were failing to make adequate reference to climate change risks in their strategic reports.

Report by Kevin Reed