The US administration’s plan to curb US coal use will ripple across the globe to Asia, where the world’s biggest consumer and miners are balancing demands for cleaner air against cheaper energy.

The hard line in President Barack Obama’s Clean Energy Plan, released last week, compounds pressure from a similar stance by China, the world’s biggest coal burner and carbon emitter, to significantly reduce reliance on the fuel. It is also giving ammunition to opponents of the hydrocarbon in top exporting nations, including Australia, in the run-up to international climate talks in Paris this December.

“The news out of the US will toughen the rhetoric against global coal use,” says Helen Lau, an analyst at Argonaut Securities Asia, in Hong Kong. “For coal as an industry, it’s definitely bad news.”

The rules, partly designed to put the US on track to meet the goal Obama laid out in negotiations for a global climate accord, come as prices struggle to recover from the lowest in almost eight years, amid slowing growth in China, the top consumer of energy, metals and grains.

As countries from China to Brazil make commitments to curb carbon emissions, Australia’s coal miners say there is technology to limit pollution from their fuel, which releases twice as much carbon when burned as gas. And, as Glencore’s head of coal assets, Peter Freyberg said in June, it is “the cheapest way of powering people out of poverty”. Meanwhile, the country’s gas industry is promoting itself as a cleaner-burning alternative.

“The civil war going on between the gas and coal industries is not helpful,” says Dean Dalla Valle, chief commercial officer at BHP Billiton, the world’s biggest miner. “It plays into the hands of others.”

Miners in Australia are focused on how China and other buyers in Asia respond to Obama’s plan. Coal was Australia’s second-biggest export earner, with shipments valued at about A$40-billion ($29-billion) last year, according to the Minerals Council of Australia.

“More important is what’s happening in China; that’s what is key to the market in Australia,” says Mathew Hodge, a Sydney-based analyst at Morningstar. “China, Japan and Korea – they are the customers. What they decide is really important.”

China will limit coal consumption to about 4.2-billion tons by 2020, reducing the fuel’s share of its energy generation to less than 62%. Coal accounted for 64% of China’s energy consumption last year, according to the country’s National Energy Administration.

Shipments by China Shenhua Energy Company, the country’s largest coal producer, dropped 24% in the first half of 2015 from the same period a year ago. The company blamed falling consumption and “heightened pressure for environmental protection”.

“Coal is on its knees,” says Tom O’Sullivan, founder of Mathyos, a Tokyo-based energy consultant. “Declining usage in China and environ- mental issues in the developed, particularly the US, and developing worlds may be putting unprecedented pressure on the sector.”

In a plan formally adopted earlier this month, Japan said it expected coal to generate about a quarter of the nation’s electricity by 2030. To do that, the country would need to depend on new coal technology that is more than twice the cost of traditional plants. It would also need to restart a significant number of its 43 nuclear reactors, shuttered since the 2011 Fukushima disaster.

Declining demand among US power plants may force the country’s coal to be exported, at a time when benchmark prices in Asia have fallen about 50% in the last four years.

“US coal may find its way back to market, which could affect supply and demand, adding pressure to low prices,” says Hendra Sinadia, deputy executive director at the Indonesian Coal Mining Association.

While Indonesia is the world’s largest exporter of the fuel for power generation, Sinadia sees the US as driving the agenda for the richest countries.