Clean Power Plan repeal opposed by climate template
The Environmental Protection Agency received 1,029 nearly identical comments in 2017-2018 opposing the proposed repeal of the Clean Power Plan. The campaign argued that the Trump administration's replacement rule would let coal-fired power plants emit more carbon dioxide and weaken state-level efforts to expand renewables.
Campaign window
143 days · 1,029 comments detected
Shape of the campaign
Each red dot is one comment that matched the campaign's template text. Grey dots are unrelated submissions to the same docket. The clustering algorithm groups comments by semantic similarity, not by exact string match, so light wording changes don't hide the pattern.
How this stacks against other campaigns in climate
- Clean Power Plan repeal opposed by climate template1,029
- EPA methane rule drew industry comment template274
Scale
The template
“I urge EPA to reject the proposed replacement of the Clean Power Plan. The Affordable Clean Energy rule will result in higher carbon emissions from existing coal-fired power plants at exactly the moment science requires us to be cutting them. State-level renewable portfolio standards and the falling cost of wind and solar are doing more than the proposed rule ever could. EPA should keep the Clean Power Plan and let the energy transition continue.”
Attribution
Who organized this?
The Sierra Club and the Environmental Defense Fund ran parallel template comment campaigns through their email lists and websites, urging supporters to oppose the Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule that would replace the Clean Power Plan.
Attribution is based on publicly available evidence. It does not imply wrongdoing.
Migration analysis
Did the campaign's language make it into the final rule?
EPA repealed the Clean Power Plan and replaced it with the less ambitious Affordable Clean Energy rule despite the campaign's opposition. The campaign's framing about state-level renewables and emissions cuts does not appear in the operative ACE text.
Phrase overlap is correlation, not causation. Many advocates and agency staff use the same vocabulary; matching language is not evidence the campaign drafted the rule.
Rule outcome
Did it influence the final rule?
EPA repealed the Clean Power Plan in June 2019 and replaced it with the Affordable Clean Energy rule, which set less ambitious emissions guidelines. The D.C. Circuit vacated the ACE rule in January 2021, and the Supreme Court later limited EPA's authority in West Virginia v. EPA (2022).
Rule outcomes are matters of public record. Astroturf does not claim the campaign caused or prevented the outcome.
> Technical details
curated-epa-hq-oar-2013-0602-ab1dd62b9514bf5fDocket IDEPA-HQ-OAR-2013-0602Finding slugclean-power-plan-repeal-opposed-by-climate-template-710813GeneratedManual (edited)