ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT: This paper examined the emerging role of active participation in planning for sustainability in the context of the energy sector in Sudan. It explored the value of integrating participatory planning and education for sustainability. The Energy Sustainability Accelerator (ESA), an informed protocol for energy participatory planning was developed by the author and tested within the research process. The initial impetus for developing ESA stemmed from the realisations of: (1) changing the models and nature of how traditional energy research handle the relationships of the socio-economic and environmental impacts of energy planning with future vision and strategies to achieve the required change in energy planning, and (2) traditional methodologies usually fail to deliver sustainable solutions to similar research problems, on the other hand an action paradigm is more relevant in being explicit about more active involvement in the formation, undertaking and execution of real-world solutions.
