The transition to low-carbon energy is creating new geographies of power. Renewable energy is shifting electricity production toward places far from the cities and industries that consume it. Long-distance transmission connects these regions across hundreds or thousands of miles, while investment in electricity infrastructure increasingly crosses national borders. My research examines these new power geographies: how political and economic power relations influence the development of electricity networks, and how those networks, in turn, redistribute power.
My research focuses primarily on China and Southeast Asia, where I use interviews, fieldwork, and spatial analysis to investigate the political economy of energy transitions. I am currently working on two projects: Low-carbon frontiers, which examines the geography and political economy of renewable energy development in China, and Exporting China's energy transition, which investigates China's growing role in energy and environmental governance abroad.
Low-carbon frontiers
My research on low-carbon frontiers analyzes how renewable energy development transforms resource-producing regions and their relationships with distant centers of consumption. A central finding is that decarbonization creates new economic dependencies in regions already shaped by resource extraction.
My early work on small hydropower in southwest China found that a technology promoted for rural development and carbon mitigation could generate conflicts over water and land while supporting other extractive industries. More recent research on large-scale wind and solar shows how national low-carbon goals have driven rapid renewable energy development in western China, far from major centers of demand. This expansion places new demands on rural land while tying producing regions to distant electricity markets, leaving them vulnerable to decisions made elsewhere about electricity prices and purchasing. My work also shows how renewable energy development is often layered onto existing extractive economies rather than replacing fossil fuels.
My research also traces electricity from mountain regions where it is generated to the megaregions where it is consumed, showing how urban and industrial demand influences which energy projects get built, where, and at what scale. I use the concept of a powershed - the infrastructure and political relationships connecting electricity supply and demand - to explain how decisions about energy consumption shape development in producing regions.
Representative publications:
Dwyer, M., & Harlan, T. 2026. Thinking with powersheds: State territoriality within and beyond the geo-body. Forthcoming in the Journal of Asian Studies.
Harlan, T., & Baka, J. 2024. Stacked energyscapes: Conceptualizing fossil fuel and renewable energy entanglements in low-carbon transitions. Energy Research and Social Science 115: 103648.
Harlan, T. 2023. Low-carbon frontier: Renewable energy and the new resource boom in western China. The China Quarterly 255: 591-610.
Hennig, T., Harlan, T., Tilt, B., & Magee, D. 2023. Hydropower development in South Asia: Data challenges, new approaches, and implications for decision-making. WIREs Water 10(4): e1654.
Harlan, T. & Hennig, T. 2022. From mountains to megaregions: A powershed analysis of the Third Pole hydropower boom. Global Environmental Change 73: 102483.
Harlan, T., Xu, R., & Jun, H. 2021. Is small hydropower beautiful? Social impacts of river fragmentation in China’s Red River basin. Ambio 50(2): 436-447.
Harlan, T. 2021. Green and pro-poor? Analyzing social benefits of small hydropower in Yunnan, China. In Rousseau, J-F. & Habich-Sobiegalla, S., eds., The Political Economy of Hydropower in Southwest China and Beyond. London: Palgrave-McMillan. Pp. 127-145.
Harlan, T. 2020. Conservation or decarbonization? Small hydropower and state logics of green development in China. Annals of the American Association of Geographers 110(5): 1464-1482.
Harlan, T. 2018. Rural utility to low-carbon industry: Small hydropower and the industrialization of renewable energy in China. Geoforum 95: 59-69.
Hennig, T. & Harlan, T. 2018. Shades of green energy: Geographies of small hydropower in Yunnan, China and the challenges of over-development. Global Environmental Change 49: 116-128.
Funding sources:
University of Melbourne Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies
Exporting China’s energy transition
This research examines how China's domestic experience with energy and environmental governance shapes its growing international influence, and how institutions in other countries adapt Chinese infrastructure and expertise to their own priorities.
In Laos, I investigate Chinese investment in hydropower and transmission, including the growing role of China Southern Power Grid in the country's electricity sector. I argue that Chinese ownership and operation of electricity infrastructure are shaping decisions about energy development in Laos and connecting the country to a wider regional grid.
Beyond infrastructure investment, Chinese institutions promote their experience with renewable energy and low-carbon development through training and technology transfer programs in the Global South. Through interviews and participant observation, I examine how Chinese approaches are received and adapted rather than assuming they are adopted wholesale.
This research is part of an ongoing collaboration on green soft power, which examines how China's environmental expertise and investment contribute to its international influence. Our findings suggest that China's leadership in global environmental governance remains partial, and the influence it gains through environmental cooperation varies across institutions and countries.
Representative publications:
Sun, Y., Rodenbiker, J., Lu, J., & Harlan, T, eds. 2027. Green Soft Power: China’s Rising Leadership in Global Environmental Governance. Forthcoming with Cambridge University Press.
Rodenbiker, J., Lu, J., & Harlan, T. 2026. China in global biodiversity governance: A new environmental leader? Eurasian Geography & Economics, Online First, 1-24.
Harlan, T., Sun, Y., Lu, J., et al. 2025. China is becoming an environmental leader. What does that mean for the rest of the world? Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, Online First: 1-17.
Harlan, T. 2024. China’s green cooperation in the energy sector: Overview and analysis. Pacific Basin Law Journal 41(2): 111-120.
Zhu, A., Weins, N., Lu, J., Harlan, T., Qian, J., & Barbi, F. 2024. China’s nature-based solutions in the Global South: Evidence from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Global Environmental Change 86: 102842.
Harlan, T., & Lu, J. 2024. The cooperation-infrastructure nexus: Translating the China model in Southeast Asia. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 45: 204-224.
Harlan, T. & Lu, J. 2022. Green cooperation: Environmental governance and development aid on China’s Belt and Road. Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, D.C.
Harlan, T. 2021. Green development or greenwashing? A political ecology perspective on China’s green Belt and Road. Eurasian Geography and Economics 62(2): 202-226.
Oliveira, G., Murton, G., Rippa, A., Harlan, T., & Yang, Y. 2020. China’s Belt and Road Initiative: Views from the ground. Introduction to the special issue. Political Geography 82: 102225.
Harlan, T. 2017. A “green” development model: Transnational model-making in China’s small hydropower training programmes. Area Development and Policy 2(3): 251-271.
Funding sources:
National Committee on U.S.-China Relations Public Intellectuals Program
Woodrow Wilson Center China Fellowship
LMU Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts
Cornell Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future Postdoctoral Fellowship