PRACSIS was busy in Paris in December 2017 organizing two events for the European Commission. The first was DG Environment’s Clean Air Forum at the splendid Hôtel de Ville. The two-day event was attended by more than 300 hundred people and viewed online by another 450. High interest in the conference was thanks to an impressive lineup of speakers, which included Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, Bulgarian Minister for Environment Nino Dimov, President of the Regional Council of Île-de-France Valerie Pecresse, EU Commissioners Karmenu Vella and Pierre Moscovici, and former EU Commissioner Dacian Cioloș.
The second conference, which took place at the Arche de la Défense, focused on how to increase financing for energy efficiency projects around Europe. The event was organized for DG Energy and EASME in cooperation with the French Ministry of Ecological & Solidary Transition. PRACSIS’s local EURACSIS agency RESET PR helped take care press relations for the conference which featured high-level speakers from French and other government ministries, CEOs of major banks, the UN, IEA, and MEPs.
On the same day, Pracsis also organized a public signing ceremony for an important loan contract between the European Investment Bank, NATIXIS (an arm of Groupe BPCE) and AKUO, a sustainable energy project developer. Ambroise Fayolle, vice-president of the EIB (pictured, middle) said “a total of €330 million is being mobilized by the EIB in cooperation with prime financial partners committed to climate action [. . .] to support Akuo in their renewable energy investments. This is a strong signal from EIB that we are stepping up financing to climate action.”