Physics for Sustainable Energy: A Conceptual Framework for Integrating Sustainability and Equity in Physics Education

Physics education is central to preparing learners to engage with contemporary energy and sustainability challenges, yet sustainability and equity remain peripheral in most physics curricula, and energy-related contexts are often fragmented. This paper develops a conceptual framework for physics education for sustainable energy by synthesizing research from physics education, energy literacy, sustainability education, socio-scientific issues, and energy justice. The proposed Physics for Sustainable Energy (PSE) framework positions sustainable energy systems as the organizing domain through which disciplinary physics reasoning, sustainability competencies, and justice-oriented analysis are co-developed. It integrates five analytic functions: sustainable energy systems as the organizing domain; disciplinary grounding in physics; pedagogical mediation between models and real-world systems; sustainability-oriented reasoning outcomes; and an equity and energy justice lens. The framework’s novelty lies in treating sustainable energy not as an application of physics, but as a structuring domain that reshapes what counts as meaningful physics learning. It makes visible key tensions, including those between efficiency and equity, model simplicity and system complexity, and quantitative rigor and ethical interpretation. Rather than prescribing specific curricula, PSE provides an analytic and design framework for evaluating alignment, coherence, and trade-offs in sustainability-oriented physics education. The framework has implications for curriculum design and future empirical research in physics education.