Andrea Furnaro-Lobos

Andrea Furnaro-Lobos is a Researcher at the European University of Flensburg, affiliated with the Interdisciplinary Institute for Environmental, Social and Human Sciences and the Department of Energy and Environmental Management. She has been an associated researcher in the CoalExit project since August 2020, contributing to analyses of coal phase-out economics, structural change, and social justice implications until the project's conclusion in March 2024.

She holds a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of California, Los Angeles, where her dissertation examined the geographic political economy of Germany's coal exit. Her research spans international energy transition dynamics, with emphasis on:

• Political economy of resource extraction
• Geographies of coal phase-out and deindustrialization
• Equity challenges in decarbonizing fossil fuel-dependent economies
• Managed decline strategies for fossil fuel production
• Just transition frameworks for coal communities
• Role of national oil companies in energy transitions

Her publication record (2019–2024) reveals a consistent focus on spatial justice in energy transitions, particularly analyzing German coal regions and extending to global contexts like Latin America and fossil fuel-rich developing nations. Key trends include critiquing neoliberal energy policies, documenting corporate strategies during transition, and evaluating place-based industrial policies for green transformation. Much of this work emerged from CoalExit collaborations, which integrated quantitative modeling of European electricity markets with qualitative studies of structural change.

As part of the international Coal Transitions Research Hub, she contributed to developing policy pathways for coal-dependent regions worldwide, with case studies on China, Colombia, India, and South Africa. Her work emphasizes the interdependence of coal phase-out policies with broader fossil fuel markets and the necessity of stakeholder-informed, socially acceptable transition designs.