Former President Clinton, who spoke at Rocky Mountain Institute’s 25th anniversary event, provided a video for Thursday’s RMI30 gala at the Empire State Building.

In it, he recalls his long association with Amory Lovins and notes that RMI helped green the White House during his presidency.

“For 30 years now, RMI has been developing solutions to our energy problems that will not only help the planet but support economic growth as well,” Clinton says in the video. He recalls working with Lovins 35 years ago, when Clinton was Arkansas governor, to encourage energy efficiency over nuclear power generation.

“We lost that battle,” he notes. “But over 30 years later, after endless battles, that same utility is now proposing to be one of the most aggressive in the country … to finance very large-scale energy efficiency. So don’t get discouraged. Thirty years, it’s a drop in the bucket.”