About CEPM

The Center for Environmental Policy and Management (CEPM) is located in Louisville, Kentucky, USA on the campus of the University of Louisville, and focuses on three project areas: 1) Brownfields/Smart Growth Research, 2) Environmental Policy and Forecasting and 3) the EPA Region 4 Southeast Regional Environmental Finance Center.

Brownfields/Smart Growth Research projects began in the early 1990’s with work on the factors shaping investments in potentially or actually contaminated sites. Staff has studied the motivations and actions of a range of stakeholders in the brownfields redevelopment process while linking the re–use issues brownfields pose to the broader questions "sprawl" and changing urban spatial form. Funding for activities on brownfields has come from different federal government offices, including:

• US Environmental Protection Agency Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response
• US Environmental Protection Agency National Center for Environmental Research
• US Department of Housing and Urban Development Office of Policy Development and Research
• US Department of Commerce, Economic Development Administration

CEPM staff has also developed exceptional expertise in the strengths and weaknesses of environmental insurance as a risk management tool facilitating brownfield redevelopment investment.

Environmental Policy Research projects have involved two distinct strands of analytical efforts:

• Research on existing policies and programs and their effects; and
• Analysis of prospective policies and future environmental conditions that might be expected to arise, given existing practices and priorities.

The Southeast Regional Environmental Finance Center is one of nine centers nationally funded by the US Environmental Protection Agency to provide technical assistance and training in avoiding, or otherwise managing, potential economy–environment conflicts, and in financing efforts to maintain or improve environmental conditions. The University of Louisville finance center has two broad mandates from EPA:

• To develop more environmentally and economically sustainable alternatives to uncontrolled and unfocused spatial expansion of human settlements, including remediation and revitalization of contaminated lands; and
• To improve the efficiency of environmental infrastructure service delivery.