The GTAP-Power Database: Disaggregating the Electricity Sector in the GTAP Database

Computable general equilibrium (CGE) models are ubiquitous in energy and environmental economics research. Recent technological advancements in electricity fuels, generation technologies, and environmental policies which target specific generation technologies (e.g., emission regulations) have motivated detailed CGE modeling of the electricity sector. Modeling these issues requires distinct electricity generating technologies in a CGE database. Researchers using the GTAP database have disaggregated the electricity sector into generating technologies independently using largely disparate, incomparable methodologies. This paper presents a methodology to create an electricity-detailed CGE database with transmission and distribution and several generating technologies, termed the GTAP-Power database. The GTAPPower database extends the GTAPv9 database in that all of the GTAPv9 data are included in the GTAP-Power version. The methodology leverages available economic and technological data along with informed expert assumptions regarding the structure of the electricity sector. Furthermore, it is transparent, repeatable, and publicly-available to encourage a common electricity-detailed CGE database for researchers and to promote continuous improvement of the database. Major limitations in the initial version accompanying GTAPv9 database are the lack of regional coverage in input cost data and disparity between available data and the total values for the electricity aggregate.