There is no grandfathering.

Joe Romm at Climate Progress has a great post today arguing against the contention that the climate bill contains a gaping loophole for old coal plants. This is the same conclusion I reached in a previous post, so it’s gratifying for me to see that my interpretation wasn’t completely off-base. Today’s Climate Progress post is in response to a piece written by the leaders of the Sierra Club, Earthjustice, and Environmental Integrity Project which claims that the climate bill gives old coal plants “a free pass to continue business as usual — without making any serious reductions in heat-trapping carbon dioxide for 15 years or more.” In response, Romm explains how ACES/ACELA in fact would result in those very same old coal plants to bear the brunt of the emissions reductions required under the shrinking cap.

In fact, it seems like Pope, Van Noppen and Schaeffer’s concerns are with the mechanism of cap-and-trade and its effectiveness:

Instead of assuring that the oldest, least efficient, and most polluting plants are phased out, Waxman-Markey leaves that up to the cap-and-trade system created by the bill.

As Romm makes clear, the cap-and-trade system is designed to cause the phasing out of those plants. They don’t come out and say it, but it seems like Pope, Van Noppen and Schaeffer would prefer a command-and-control solution — which might be more effective at combating global warming, but is undoubtedly politically unfeasible in terms of passing legislation.

Romm manages to in two sentences sum up how the climate bill works and why it should be passed:

In the real world the much-maligned House climate and clean energy bill would do what clean energy and climate advocates have been demanding for decades: It would set up the framework to allow low-carbon technologies to compete against fairly — and thus steadily replace — existing coal at the lowest possible cost.