Famed progressive thinker and Google co-founder Larry Page is working out the details as he plans his new 6,000-square-foot, eco-friendly house on an acre sized lot in Palo Alto. The Google house will include solar panels, materials that do not emit toxic chemicals, and paving that allows the rain to seep through, which is a major plus in California, where water planners are looking to fill up aquifers.
The exterior of the house will have zinc cladding and plenty of enormous windows, including a wall of sliding-glass doors in the back. Page is also working with an arborist to replace some trees in poor health with those that use less water.
Building this eco-house adds to Page’s forward thinking work in areas such as alternative energy companies (he was a major investor in Tesla Motors, which developed the Tesla Roadster, a 220-mile (350 km) range battery electric vehicle.) Larry Page, with the help of Google’s philanthropic arm, promotes the adoption of plug-in hybrid electric cars and other alternative energy investments.
March 24th, 2009 at 10:16 am
Write your congressman! The Detroit Big 3 (Who are fronts for the oil companies), the banks (Who conduit the oil company money) and AIG (who keeps the oil companies protected) were handed money in a sack within a few days with no questions asked, no application and no review process but the alternative energy people, ie: wind, solar and electric cars must pay massive fees, file thousands of pages of paper and wait years to see if they MIGHT get some money. It seems as if there is an intentional program going on to delay alternative energy. Already, multiple solar companies that were waiting for that money have been forced to go out of business by the delay and most of the electric car companies are going to die soon too.
March 29th, 2009 at 6:35 pm
According to Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”, US and Australia are the only 2 ountries not supporting environmental friendly initiatives. Larry is doing the right thing to reverse this. As the saying goes “When the people lead, the leaders will follow …”
August 4th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
How is a 6,000-square-foot house eco-friendly? Even if it were net zero energy (and I’m sure it isn’t since it’s not mentioned), the life cycle emissions and energy usage of the materials would be high.
You want to be eco-friendly? Live in a smaller house.
And, electric cars are only eco-friendly if the power mix is – and you’ve still got transmission losses to consider.