Erik Rothenberg

Erik Rothenberg is the founder and managing director of URSULA Project, an effort to create an open and global standard. URSULA stands for Unified Rating System, Universal Life Cycle Assessment and is a way of scoring and rating anything and everything against a standard that serves all life on earth.

He is also founder and managing director of 3Phases, Inc., a solar energy project developer. Established in 2001 as 3 Phases Energy Services, trading biomass power at the peak of California’s energy crisis, the company pioneered the corporate Renewable Energy Certificate (REC) markets, eventually trading 5% of the U.S. total. In 2007, the REC business became an independent spinoff of the company, now 3Degrees. Since 2005, the company has installed commercial and industrial solar projects, including some of the largest of their kind at commissioning.

In 1994, Rothenberg co-founded Internet service provider SoftAware and grew it into one of the three largest data storage facilities in the world. SoftAware was sold to Digital Island in 2000 for $430M.

He spent his formative business career in the import/export business, focused on European and Asian markets, eventually founding Atlas Corporation in 1991. By 1995, Atlas held a 9% global market share of soya distillate, the feedstock for natural Vitamin E. By 1998, the company was the world’s largest trader of hemp seed oil.