Write an archiver for the EPA Priority Climate Action Plan Directory

[zaneselvans]

Motivation and context:

EPA’s Priority Climate Action Plan (PCAP) Directory organizes data collected from 211 PCAPs submitted by states, Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs), Tribes, and territories under EPA’s Climate Pollution Reduction Grants (CPRG) program. PCAPs are a compilation of each jurisdiction’s identified priority actions (or measures) to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The directory presents information from more than 30 data categories related to GHG inventories, GHG reduction measures, benefits for low-income and disadvantaged communities (LIDACs), and other PCAP elements.

The directory is designed to help CPRG planning grantees identify and leverage approaches within PCAPs to support the development of their Comprehensive Climate Action Plans (CCAPs) due under the CPRG program.

The PCAP Directory has three components:

• Searchable data tables. PCAP data from states, MSAs, Tribes, and territories is presented in tables focused on PCAP elements (e.g., GHG reduction measures) that can be used to browse, filter, and extract information from the directory’s full dataset. Tables include page number citations and hyperlinks as appropriate to quickly access the primary source materials for each entry.
• Summary tables. Summary tables highlight patterns and trends within the PCAP Directory data (e.g., economic sectors with the largest number of GHG reduction measures) across and within different jurisdictional levels.
• Downloadable spreadsheets. The data collected by EPA from state, MSA, Tribal, and territorial PCAPs is available to download. This includes data featured in the searchable tables, data used to create the summary tables, and other PCAP data that does not appear in the directory web pages.

It looks like the "complete" source data is actually just the 3 downloadable spreadsheets, and they do not appear to have historical updates.

Links

Include a link to the dataset webpage and any metadata documentation.

• https://www.epa.gov/inflation-reduction-act/priority-climate-action-plan-directory

The XLSX sheets for archiving are currently at:

• https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2025-01/priority-climate-action-plan-directory_state_1.8.2025.xlsx
• https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2025-01/priority-climate-action-plan-directory_msa_1.8.2025.xlsx
• https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2025-01/priority-climate-action-plan-directory_tribal_1.8.2025.xlsx

However the real source data is in the PDFs that were published by the various local state/MSA/tribal jurisdictions. Those are currently hosted on the EPA site, and also need to be archived. The URLs for those documents are contained in the spreadsheets, but can also be obtained from the searchable tables interfaces:

• https://www.epa.gov/inflation-reduction-act/ghg-inventories-searchable-table
• https://www.epa.gov/inflation-reduction-act/ghg-reduction-measures-searchable-table
• https://www.epa.gov/inflation-reduction-act/ghg-reduction-measures-co-pollutant-benefits
• https://www.epa.gov/inflation-reduction-act/lidac-benefits-searchable-table

Requirements for archiving

To be archived on Zenodo, a dataset must be:

• published under an open license that permits reuse and redistribution
• less than 50Gb in size (when zipped)
• relevant to energy modelling and research

Checklist for archive creation

Based on the README documentation on creating a new archive:

• Define the dataset's metadata
• Implement archiver interface
• Test archiver locally
• Test uploading to Zenodo
• Manually review archive before publication
• Finalize archive (only core Catalyst developers can complete this step)
• Automate archiving

Links to published archives:

Include a link to the published sandbox archive for review.