A State Policymaker’s Guide to Power Sector Modeling

In a new report, the Bipartisan Policy Center and Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions explore the value, use, and limitations of economic modeling of the electricity sector. The report presents a suite of recent analyses by different organizations, showing how economic modeling can be used to simulate possible policy, market, and technology changes as the electricity sector transforms due to growth of domestic natural gas, increased use for electric generation, the rapid progress of renewable technologies, and environmental regulations.

It is meant to be a guide for state policymakers who have both the benefit and challenge of unpacking modeling results and figuring out how best to learn from diverse findings. It provides them with both an understanding of how to best utilize economic models and interpret their results as well as explores key modeling structures often being deployed to model carbon regulations such as the Clean Power Plan and input assumptions that impact power sector modeling results.