COPENHAGEN—Top executives from companies likely to win from climate change policies demanded on Tuesday that governments turn away from fossil fuels when they sign a new climate pact, expected in December.

Seven months before the world meets to try and thrash out a new global treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, executives and investors called for tough targets to slash carbon emissions at a green business conference in Copenhagen.

Denmark’s Prime Minister welcomed a statement drawn up by top executives from pro-green business, including wider industry comments, calling for aid to help clean technologies replace fossil fuels.

"There’s only one way forward and that is low-carbon growth, our world should no longer depend on fossil fuels," said Lars Lokke Rasmussen, prime minister of a country which gets a fifth of its power from wind, and which hosts the UN-led climate negotiations in December.

"You hold in your hands the key to reshaping the world by bringing low-carbon products to the markets," he told more than 500 executives attending the May 24-26 World Business Summit on Climate Change.

A "Copenhagen Climate Council" of 12 chief executives, as well as academics and development groups wrote a final statement which called for greenhouse gases to peak within a decade. They included the chiefs of DONG Energy, Vestas, Duke Energy, Virgin Group, Suntech Power and others.

"The new climate treaty must push the development of new technologies through public funds," said the statement in its "Copenhagen Call." "Governments should strive to end subsidies that favor high emissions transport and energy infrastructure."

UN climate chief Yvo de Boer told a news conference that while the participants had showed they want ambitious results in Copenhagen, they were "not entirely representative."