Carbon dioxide and other gases that contribute to global warming should cost at least C$30 ($30) a ton next year, and reach C$75 a ton by 2020, according to a report today co-written by 11 groups. The price could be set by imposing a tax on carbon or through regulations with emissions trading, said Matthew Bramley, director of climate change at the Pembina Institute, a group that advocates for cleaner energy generation.

The price must be ``high enough to really change investment decisions so that investments stop going into highly polluting technologies,'' Bramley said at a press conference in Ottawa today. ``The policies, including the regulations that the Harper government has proposed to date, are far too weak to meet even the government's own targets.''

Prime Minister Stephen Harper rejects a carbon tax. That position was backed in January by Stephane Dion, leader of the Liberal Party, the biggest opposition bloc. Harper's Conservative Party government last year set regulations where the only carbon price was an option for companies to pay into a technology fund at C$15 a ton in 2010, C$20 a ton in 2013, then rising along with economic growth.

Environment Minister John Baird last year pledged to regulate all industries' greenhouse-gas emissions and cut them 20 percent by 2020.

Today's report echoed a January paper by a government advisory group that said the government should consider a carbon tax. The National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy predicted the price of carbon could rise to C$200 a ton by 2030 from C$20 a ton in 2015.  Source

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