The Office of Biological and Environmental Research's Environmental Remediation Sciences Division (ERSD) sponsors and supports fundamental scientific research to understand the complex physical, chemical, and biological properties of contaminated sites for new solutions to environmental remediation.

ERSD supports two major activities.

The Environmental Remediation Sciences Program (ERSP) seeks to provide the fundamental scientific knowledge needed to address challenging environmental problems that impede the remediation of contaminated environmental sites. See the ERSP Strategic Plan for more information.

The Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL) is a national scientific user facility located at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Richland, Washington which provides integrated experimental and computational resources for discovery and technological innovation in the environmental molecular sciences to support the needs of DOE and the nation.

DOE is responsible for what has been described as the largest, most complex, and diverse collection of environmental remediation challenges in the nation. While some of the problems are tractable and require only time and money to resolve, a large fraction of them cannot be resolved with existing knowledge and technology. It is the need for solutions to this subset of environmental remediation problems that drives the ERSD research program.

ERSD supports a long-term measure, adopted in 2005, that by 2015, the Division will “provide sufficient scientific understanding such that DOE sites would be able to incorporate physical, chemical and biological processes into decision making for environmental remediation and long-term stewardship.” Progress toward this long-term goal is evaluated by quarterly, annual and long-term measures through the Administration’s Performance Assessment Rating Tool (PART). For more information on PART and on this specific measure, see the Office of Science PART page. For information on ERSD's specific annual and quarterly milestones in support of PART, see the ERSD Annual and Quarterly Milestones page.

ERSD is committed to seeking input from the scientific community and providing management that is predictable and transparent to support the overall scientific community and advance DOE’s mission in environmental remediation by addressing DOE environmental remediation challenges that can benefit from long-term basic scientific research.

We invite you to explore this site to learn more about our research programs and facilities.

News and Highlights from ERSD

ERSD Publications