Canada will initiate a nationwide tax on carbon emissions to combat the threat of climate change.

Catherine McKenna, Canada's environmental minister, said the tax on the greenhouse gas, blamed for manmade warming of the Earth's atmosphere, will go into effect by the end of the year, according to Bloomberg TV Canada.

"What we want to see is uniformity in terms of a national price, also that we're doing it in a thoughtful way, and provinces and territories need to decide what they're doing with the revenues," she said.

The tax, or fee, will affect higher-emitting resources such as coal plants the most. The tax is meant to drive the development of lower-carbon energy resources in an effort to combat global warming.

"We need a national price on carbon," she said. "So that's what we're going to have in the fall."

President Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau are collaborating closely on creating a broader continental strategy for reducing carbon emissions as part of the Obama administration's final-year climate push and December's international climate deal.

The carbon tax announcement comes shortly after Obama, Trudeau and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto announced a continent-wide clean energy target, while taking steps to reduce the greenhouse gas methane, which is short-lived but much more potent than carbon dioxide.

The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday finalized new regulations for solid waste landfills to begin capturing methane emissions at much higher levels than previously directed.

The administration does not have the option of a nationwide carbon-reduction policy such as Canada's tax without the approval of Congress. Instead, Obama has sought to get as close as possible to a nationwide climate policy through a plethora of regulations and administrative directives.

Friday's action by the EPA on methane was a prime example of that. The new rules for landfills act in tandem with other regulations to limit methane from the oil and gas sector, which the industry is opposed to.

The regulations, atop those for the electric utility industry, comprise the president's climate agenda.

The centerpiece of the administration's agenda are the utility rules, specifically the Clean Power Plan and New Source rule, which together require states to lower their carbon emissions by a third by 2030,while placing a de facto ban on new coal-fired power plants.

The utility climate rules are being hotly contested in the courts, with the Supreme Court halting the Clean Power Plan until all litigation has been resolved.