Making Carbon Zero Profitable
On a crisp, bright winter day atop a four-story building in downtown Palo Alto, Brenden Millstein pauses for a moment to point to a tall apartment building a few blocks away.
“That’s Sergey Brin’s home,” he said.
Like the Google co-founder, Millstein, 28, came to Palo Alto to develop a technology and mission that will change the world. That mission—making it profitable for buildings to be carbon neutral—continues today here, on the flat, silver rooftop of 125 University Avenue.
Millstein, who has an MBA and MS from Stanford, is joined by Raphael Rosen, 27, the co-founder of their company, Carbon Lighthouse . Senior Engineer Francisco Isenberg, 27, is also here to help. The three young backpack-clad men traverse a thin walkway and come to a massive, loud, rusty machine that controls the building’s heating and cooling.
It is a beastly, inefficient monstrosity, and is comparable to those found on nearly every like building in the world. The deafening whirring of a massive fan greets the team as they enter the shielded room that blocks the noise from escaping the roof.