Importing the energy transition: Emerging powersheds in the Asia Pacific
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Importing the Energy Transition
Thursday, Oct. 23rd. | 12:00p.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Political Science Village - University Hall 4100----------------------------------------------
Prof. Tyler Harlan will discuss how Asia’s megacities—long reliant on coal—are accelerating their energy transitions as governments commit to ambitious emissions reduction targets. He explores how meeting these goals requires not only a massive expansion of renewable energy, but also a growing reliance on electricity imports from distant rural regions rich in renewable resources.
He considers how these long-distance “powersheds”—the infrastructures linking electricity supply and demand—create new political and economic relationships between cities and rural areas. Drawing on cases from Shanghai and Singapore, he asks how and why such power transfers are organized, and what role China, the world’s largest renewable energy generator, plays as both a model and a driver of these emerging systems.
Tyler Harlan is an Associate Professor and Chair of Urban and Environmental Studies at Loyola Marymount University. He is interested in the spatial politics and uneven socio-environmental impacts of China's green development transformation, and the implications of this transformation for other industrializing countries. From 2018-19, he was a postdoctoral fellow in sustainability in the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future at Cornell University. He received a PhD in Geography in 2017 from the University of California, Los Angeles, an MPhil in Resource Management and Geography from the University of Melbourne, and a BA in Anthropology and East Asian Studies from Vanderbilt University.
