Climate change is a major topic this week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland as leaders continue to discuss governmental and private efforts to address the issue.

Former President Bill Clinton recently shared his thoughts on the topic as he visited the Cornerstone Baptist Church in Brooklyn which underwent an energy retrofit completed by BlocPower.

The Brooklyn-based company and its CEO Donnel Baird have a goal of greening urban America through the use of technology to make clean energy accessible and affordable for lower-income communities around the country. The Institute is an investor in BlocPower.

“Every place you go into uses energy,” said President Clinton after getting a tour of the century-old building that’s now saving more than $150,000 a year in energy costs after BlocPower’s renovation. “Where you sleep, where you work, where you worship, you can’t be expected to keep up with all the moving parts. Some of the lowest-cost responses are what you see happening in this church.

“What Donnel and his crew (at BlocPower) have done is to do the thinking for us… This may seem like a small project, but this is a picture through which you can see a better future.

“Here you’ve made going to church a better experience. Look up, it’s not just God’s lights that are shining on you right now, right? You did something but you also proved if everybody did what you did, you can change the world.

“(BlocPower) made it easier for us to do what’s right by ourselves but also by our children, our grandchildren, (and) the whole planet.”

BlocPower has provided clean energy to more than a thousand buildings in New York City and is growing to other cities in 2020 including Oakland and Milwaukee. For more information on BlocPower’s efforts, please visit its website: http://blocpower.io/

Here’s our video of President Clinton’s visit: