Take Action on the Energy Innovation Act

This training will help you and your chapter learn how to get active to build support in-district to move the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act forward throughout your community and with our members of Congress.

Ask your Representative to cosponsor 

 Email your House Representative asking them to cosponsor the Energy Innovation Act: https://cclusa.org/energy

Use CCL's action tool to write your Congressional Representative and ask them to co-sponsor the Energy Innovation Act and help us blow past our goal of 5,000 messages this month!

Amplify the bill on social media

After you’ve written to your Representative, hop on your favorite social media platform and spread the word. Use CCL’s social media toolkit to build your own posts about the bill.

Ongoing: You’ll find posts and spread the word about the bill introduction by sharing CCL’s posts on your favorite platform: https://cclusa.org/stw 

Tabling and clipboarding

Let’s get out there and table on the Energy Innovation Act!

We want people to hear about it at farmers markets, fall festivals, state fairs, and anywhere else you can set up a table or walk around with a clipboard.

We have full page and quarter page handouts available in both English and Spanish and they’ve added a QR code linking to the Energy Innovation Act website.

When tabling or clipboarding, we suggest having a few of the two-sided, full size handouts, perhaps laminated, available to show people while you talk to them. Make sure one of them is in Spanish because even if you don’t speak Spanish, someone who stops by might and it creates a more inclusive space for them. The quarter sheet flyer is a great handout for people to take with them. 

• Energy Innovation Act Fact Sheet 
• Energy Innovation Act 1/4-Sheet Flyer

There is also the Constituent Comment Form! This new form is for the Energy Innovation Act only. There are two versions: one asking a Representative to become a co-sponsor and one for Representatives who have co-sponsored. The design is simple and eye-catching. The graphic shows how significant the Energy Innovation Act will be in reducing emissions. The form is easy for a constituent to fill out with space for a brief personalized message. And for folks who want to join CCL, they can just check of the Join CCL box.  We’ll be collecting as many of these as possible now through the spring when we’ll deliver them to our Representatives’ district offices.  Together we’ll send a strong message of grassroots support to Congress from every corner of the country!

• Energy Innovation Act Fact Constituent Comment Form

• Energy Innovation Act Cashback Check

Scheduling and giving presentations

This is also an opportunity to drive interest in your community by shifting the focus of presentations back to the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act.  You can brush up on scheduling and presenting skills by joining the Presenters and Schedulers Action Team. Dave Cain, Abe Mazliach, and John Keller will take good care of you there. 

As many of you have learned in CCL, presenting is a team sport. 

• Someone in your chapter who is organized and gently persistent can line up presentations - maybe that’s you: the scheduler.
• Someone in your chapter can present - this would be a volunteer who enjoys public speaking or would like to stretch outside their comfort zone and give a talk. Maybe you are the presenter for your chapter.
• A small team of one, two, or three to join the presenter. -This team sits in the audience and helps with networking before and after the talk.  You may even be able to convince the hosting organization to allow your chapter to set up a table outside of the auditorium so the audience members have a place to learn more about CCL and the Energy Innovation Act after the presentation concludes. 

To help you with your presentations, we have an updated slide deck about the Energy Innovation Act. You may incorporate it into your presentation, or it could be used on its own. The slides include the bill benefits, how it works, and information about why the Inflation Reduction act, clean energy permitting reform, and the Energy Innovation Act together will help us cut US carbon pollution 50% by 2030 It even includes a tiktok video by our own Dana Nuccitelli explaining how carbon pricing works. 

• Energy Innovation Act Slide Deck

Write letters to the editor

A letter to the editor (LTE) is a short piece, usually 150 to 250 words, that you can submit to your local newspaper to be published. An LTE offers your own perspective or commentary on a topic, often suggested by an article or feature in the newspaper. We've updated the LTE resource page with some suggestions on how you can help create an effective LTE:

• Letters To The Editor Topics

Gather endorsements from community leaders 

• Get back in touch with previous endorsers 
• Invite new grasstops supporters to endorse carbon cashback 

This is a great time to reconnect with people who previously endorsed the Energy Innovation Act or carbon fee and dividend. Let them know that the 118th Congress now has an Energy Innovation Act. Celebrate this fact. Ask if they have any questions. And strengthen the connections that your chapter has with leaders in the community.

This is also a good time to reach out to local respected leaders whom you haven’t yet approached. Inform them about the Energy Innovation Act, invite them to endorse the bill, thus increasing the number of local respected leaders who now know about the Energy Innovation Act, have learned about CCL, and can possibly help with your advocacy efforts.

During your conversations with previous endorsers or potential new supporters, you can use the handouts we’ve already highlighted or run through the slide presentation, then direct them to our endorsement page and have them choose the second option, I support a carbon cashback, which references the Energy Innovation Act.

Endorse at: https://cclusa.org/endorse 

• Elli Sparks
• Elizabeth Dell

• Download the video

Instructions for printing this page on Community.