U.S. companies could save tens of billions of dollars by investing in efforts to combat deforestation in developing nations instead of cleaning up their own domestic carbon dioxide emissions, according to a report released Wednesday.

The report, from the Commission on Climate and Tropical Forests, backs the use of so-called “forest offsets” in the global effort to curb pollution heating up the atmosphere. It was released in advance of the upcoming U.S. Senate debate on climate legislation later this year and an international meeting on the issue set for December in Copenhagen.

The burning of tropical forests and their conversion to cattle farms and soybean fields is responsible for some 17 percent of the emissions that are causing global warming — more than all the world’s cars, trucks, trains and planes combined.

“It is one of the few major sources of emissions that can be addressed cost-effectively now,” said the report from a panel co-chaired by former Sen. Lincoln Chafee, R-R.I., and John Podesta, chief of staff under President Bill Clinton and now head of the Center for American Progress, an influential Washington-based think tank.

The commission estimates that if American companies invest about $60 billion between 2012 and 2020 to preserve rainforests in such countries as Brazil and Indonesia, they could achieve the same amount of global emissions cuts while avoiding the expense of about $110 billion on U.S. remedies.

That would amount to a net savings of $50 billion — enough, perhaps, to make climate legislation palatable to companies that have opposed tough global warming rules.