Lyon, city of cleantechs
Lyon increasingly seems to be the city of Cleantechs, and this year welcomes the prestigious Cleantech Forum.
The city succeeds Florence in hosing the event, and the first session was an opportunity for organizers and partners to catch up and enjoy the beautiful surroundings this year in the magnificent setting of the city’s Palais de la Bourse.
Frédéric Miribel opened the forum by giving some historical details on the extraordinary building that housed the event.
Investin Lyon has attracted nearly 90 companies to the Lyon region, representing more than 200 jobs. The greater Lyon area is indeed a very attractive location and has featured at the top of European rankings for many years for quality of life in several key performance indicators such as number of students, attractiveness, etc.
Cleantech has been the second most important source of business for the city of Lyon for the past ten years. Frédéric Miribel ascribed this success to the geographical proximity of all the principal stakeholders in the industry, making it easy and efficient for the important players in the sector to interact.
Cleantech has been a strategic priority in Lyon’s economic development since 2008 and cleantech companies played their role in bringing about a lot of changes in the urban space.
The redevelopment of the Rhône and Saône rivers, where parking lots have given way to green spaces for quiet walks, is just one example of municipal initiative Lyon has undertaken in moving towards becoming a greener city.
Albin Jourda, the president of French Cleantech, praised the technical excellence of the city, but also its extremely fruitful participatory environment, as well as the ability of manufacturers to experiment easily.
The environment sector therefore has a wide variety of local stakeholders, including research organizations, platforms, clusters, industrial manufacturers and, of course, events like Pollutec and Big Booster, which have been launched recently.
The major cleantech sectors for the city are green chemistry, energy and the smart-city. Lyon is in fact recognised as being the first smart-city in France and produces 20% of French electricity ( the leading producer in France).
The region also has several promising cleantech companies such as Amoéba or McPhy example.
