plutus: An R package to calculate electricity investments and stranded assets from the Global Change Analysis Model (GCAM)

Abstract

plutus is an R package that post-processes outputs from the Global Change Analysis Model (GCAM; Calvin et al., 2019) to calculate the power sector capital investment costs and stranded asset costs associated with GCAM projections of electricity generation by technology. GCAM is a market equilibrium model used to examine the dynamics of the coupled human-Earth system and the response of this system to global change, including socioeconomics, technology, climate, and policy. GCAM tracks electricity generation by technology and vintage over 32 geopolitical regions throughout the lifetime of each generating technology. plutus extends GCAM functionality by (1) estimating the foregone economic value of prematurely retired power plants as a result of economic-induced retirements compared to scheduled lifetimes; and (2) estimating the new installations and capital investments driven by future changes in economic, energy, agriculture, and land-use systems in GCAM. The concept and methodology for calculating electricity investments and stranded assets is detailed in Binsted et al. (2020) and Iyer et al. (2017).