Environmental Sustainability | PD 23 7643

Opportunity Information: Apply for PD 23 7643

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Environmental Sustainability program (Funding Opportunity Number PD 23 7643) is a discretionary grant opportunity within NSF's Environmental Engineering and Sustainability cluster, alongside the Environmental Engineering and Nanoscale Interactions programs. Its central aim is to advance engineering research that enables sustainable engineered systems that improve human well-being while remaining compatible with long-term functioning of natural systems that provide essential ecological services. A defining feature of this program is its long time-horizon perspective: it is interested in research that anticipates downstream and cumulative impacts over years to decades, and it is open to incorporating relevant insights from social sciences and ethics when those elements strengthen the sustainability framing or outcomes. At a high level, the program is looking for engineering-driven ideas that help balance environmental protection with economic stability, and that can plausibly shift systems toward more sustainable states rather than delivering narrow, incremental improvements.

The program highlights five major research areas. Circular Bioeconomy Engineering supports work that enables society to rely more on sustainably produced biomass for food, energy, and materials, while improving how key resources like water, nitrogen, and phosphorus are managed. A major emphasis is reducing and ultimately eliminating fossil fuel combustion that does not include carbon capture, and redesigning material flows to minimize waste through closed-loop or circular processing. Industrial ecology focuses on the modeling and measurement backbone needed to understand and improve sustainability, encouraging advances in tools such as life cycle assessment, materials flow analysis, net energy analysis, input-output economic modeling, and the development of new metrics that better capture sustainability performance. Green engineering centers on systems-level approaches that improve sustainability across manufacturing, buildings, and infrastructure, especially work that spans multiple processes or looks holistically at how systems are designed and operated; it also includes interest in distribution and collection systems that support smart growth, as well as innovations like improved stormwater management and water recycling or reuse approaches framed as green engineering strategies. Ecological engineering is aimed at the engineering dimensions of restoring ecological function in natural systems, including research that enhances natural capital in ways that support sustainable development. Earth systems engineering addresses large-scale engineering challenges tied to global change, including greenhouse gas mitigation, climate adaptation, and other global environmental concerns, again with an explicit engineering and sustainability framing rather than purely descriptive environmental science.

NSF makes clear that proposals must be grounded in engineering principles and explicitly presented in an environmental sustainability context. Proposals are expected to include meaningful participation of at least one graduate student in the engineering research, and also involve undergraduates. Interdisciplinary integration is welcomed, particularly when social, behavioral, and economic sciences strengthen the work (for example, when adoption, incentives, governance, behavioral responses, equity implications, or ethical tradeoffs are essential to whether a technical solution succeeds in the real world). At the same time, the solicitation draws a bright boundary around certain topics: proposals primarily focused on water treatment, air pollution (indoor or outdoor), soil remediation, or solid waste treatment should be submitted instead to the NSF Environmental Engineering program (CBET 1440). For projects that do not neatly fit the program's core areas, NSF notes that innovative out-of-scope ideas might still be considered, but it strongly recommends contacting the program director before submission to reduce the risk of the proposal being returned without review. Similarly, if the research includes work in regions outside the United States, the proposal must explain how the research would benefit the United States.

In terms of what makes a competitive application, the program repeats common NSF Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems (CBET) expectations: proposals should clearly articulate novelty and/or potentially transformative aspects compared to prior work, explain why the work matters for engineering science, and project the potential societal and/or industrial impact if the research succeeds. NSF specifically expects the novelty or transformative angle to be stated at minimum in the Project Summary, which signals that reviewers and program staff will look for that case to be made early and unambiguously. Award structure is typical of CBET unsolicited awards: projects are generally funded for up to three years, with single-investigator budgets commonly supporting one graduate student (or equivalent) and up to one month of PI time per year; multi-investigator projects are often larger, and unusually large budgets should be discussed with the program director before submission. The opportunity is open to eligible applicants without categorical restrictions beyond any clarifications in the solicitation text, and proposals are accepted at any time rather than on a single annual deadline. The posted award ceiling is listed as 0 (which generally indicates no fixed ceiling is specified in the public listing rather than that awards are zero), and the program anticipates making around 103 awards.

The program also encourages several NSF proposal mechanisms and planning formats. CAREER proposals are strongly encouraged for early-career faculty, with a typical five-year duration and an Engineering CAREER submission deadline in July each year. NSF is also open to conference, workshop, and supplement proposals, but encourages prior discussion with the program director. RAPID (Rapid Response Research), EAGER (Early-concept Grants for Exploratory Research), and GOALI (industry-academic partnership proposals) are all possible under this program when appropriate; however, RAPID and EAGER (and, per the solicitation language, GOALI as well) should be discussed with the program director before submission, and these mechanisms can generally be submitted at any time during the year. Finally, NSF emphasizes compliance: proposals that do not follow the Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide (PAPPG) will be returned without review, making adherence to formatting, content requirements, and submission rules a non-negotiable part of competitiveness.

• The National Science Foundation in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Environmental Sustainability" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 47.041.
• This funding opportunity was created on Apr 05, 2023.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Proposals accepted anytime. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 103 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Unrestricted (i.e., open to any type of entity above), subject to any clarification in text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility.

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