Ontario introduced legislation yesterday that, if passed, will eliminate coal-fired generation as a source of electricity.

The proposed Ending Coal for Cleaner Air Act is intended to ensure that once coal facilities stop operating by the end of 2014, coal-burning generation on the electricity grid will never happen again.

Jim Bradley, Ontario’s Minister of the Environment said of the new legislation ” Coal-fired electricity generation is a major source of health-threatening smog, and of climate-destabilizing carbon dioxide. Our proposed legislation will ensure that dirty coal-fired electricity remains a practice of the past.”

Our recent blog posts have tracked efforts by the Ontario and US. administration to reduce carbon pollution from coal-fired electricity generation (see our posts Climate Change: Obama follows through with tough new regulations for coal-fired generation and Ontario on Track to Eliminate Coal-Fired Generation: Will U.S. Follow Its Example?

The introduction of this new Act brings Ontario’s government within striking distance of achieving its long-standing promise to shut the coal-fire electricity plants in Ontario by 2014.