In the US, the bulk of CO2 abatement induced by carbon taxes comes from electric power. This paper incorporates technology detail into the electricity sector of a computable general equilibrium model of the US economy to characterize electric power's technological margins of adjustment to carbon taxes and to elucidate their general equilibrium effects. Compared to the top-down production function representation of the electricity sector, the technology-rich hybrid specification produces less abatement at a higher welfare cost, suggesting that bottom-up models do not necessarily generate lower costs of abatement than top-down models. This result is shown to be sensitive to the elasticity with which technologies' generating capacities adjust to relative prices. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.