Burning coal to generate electricity is rapidly declining in the United States.

President Joe Biden’s administration moved Thursday to speed up the demise of the climate-changing, lung-damaging fossil fuel while attempting to ease the transition to cleaner sources of energy.

A suite of new regulations adopted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency requires coal-fired power plants to reduce emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide by 90%, demands steeper reductions of brain-damaging mercury pollution, clamps down on toxic metals dumped into lakes and rivers and orders the removal of hazardous coal ash from scores of unlined pits across the nation.

The Biden administration also put the gas industry on notice it might not continue to enjoy its recent economic advantages compared to coal. Any new gas-fired plants built in the United States will need to meet the same stringent limit on carbon dioxide pollution as existing coal plants.

“We are ensuring that the power sector has the information needed to prepare for the future with confidence, enabling strong investment and planning decisions,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said Wednesday during a call with journalists. “These actions will also allow us to tackle the full array of threats that power plants pose to clean air, safe water and healthy land.”

U.S. power plants are second only to transportation in the amount of climate change pollution emitted into the atmosphere.

For now, though, existing gas-fired plants are exempt from the administration’s demand to limit carbon dioxide emissions. In February, Regan said the EPA plans to adopt separate rules for existing gas plants including other types of pollution disproportionately affecting low-income, Black and Latino neighbors — action that almost assuredly depends on the results of the 2024 election.

The regulations directed at coal plants will increase costs for energy companies that still rely on the fossil fuel and could force the closure of generators operating on slim margins. Activists who clamored for changes and repeatedly sued the EPA said the Biden EPA’s policies will force the industry to account for decades of damage to public health and the environment.

“Power plants for far too long have been able to get away with treating our waterways like an open sewer,” said Thomas Cmar, an attorney with Earthjustice, a nonprofit legal organization that challenged weaker coal ash and wastewater rules adopted by the Obama and Trump administrations. “It is long past time for this dangerous damaging practice to end.”

Despite dozens of coal plants closing in recent years, the industry has still been responsible for about a third of the heavy metals released into water nationally — more than any economic sector.

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