WASHINGTON — The Biden administration is making $2 billion available to community groups, states and tribes to clean up pollution and develop clean energy in disadvantaged communities in what officials called the largest-ever investment in environmental justice.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan called the grant program “historic” and said it “has the promise to turn disadvantaged and overburdened areas into healthy, resilient and thriving communities for current and future generations.”

The program, funded by the climate law signed last year by President Joe Biden, is aimed at poor and minority communities “that have long been overlooked and forgotten” and struggle to gain access to federal funding, Regan said.

Regan, the first Black man to lead EPA, has made environmental justice a top priority and has visited a number of poor and minority communities in the South, Appalachia and Alaska in a yearslong “Journey to Justice” tour.

Biden has repeatedly emphasized his commitment to environmental justice, including an executive order in April to create a White House Office of Environmental Justice.

The grant program will be overseen by EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights, which Regan created last year.

The grants are aimed at nonprofits and other locally-based groups that will partner with cities, states, tribes or colleges and universities to boost climate resiliency and adaptation; mitigate urban “heat islands” and wildfires; monitor air and water pollution; reduce indoor air toxins; and boost zero-emissions transportation such as bikes and electric vehicles.