Blue Earth Summit

When you first meet Ben Riddle-Turner, the founder and CEO of Origen, the first thing you notice is his clarity. He’s calm, technical, grounded, and then he describes himself as a “self-professed carbon dioxide nerd.”

And suddenly, everything clicks.

Because Origen isn’t simply a company. It’s the result of one person who has spent two decades obsessed with a single question:

How do we remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at the scale required to reverse climate change?

Today, Origen joins Blue Earth Ventures as an official Ventures Member, and they’re raising £5 million (EIS) through our investor network to bring their technology to commercial scale.

This is their story.

• 👉 Listen to the full podcast on Spotify
• 👉 Watch the full podcast on YouTube

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A Founder Shaped by Carbon

Ben’s journey started in climate science and geology, a teenager fascinated by atmospheric CO₂ long before carbon markets went mainstream. But instead of staying in academia, he took an unexpected route: investment banking and asset management.

Why finance?

To understand scale. To understand commercialisation. And, as it turned out, to understand carbon as a tradable commodity.

But everything changed in 2018.

• The EU emissions trading scheme was reformed.
• Carbon prices jumped from €6 to €20 per tonne.
• The IPCC released the report stating we must remove up to one trillion tonnes of CO₂ from the atmosphere.

Ben did the maths. And the numbers spelled out one thing clearly:

Carbon removal is the biggest market of the next century.

He walked away from finance and into the world of engineered carbon removal.

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Meeting the Original Founder and Rebuilding Origen

Origen was originally founded in 2013 by Tim Kruger, a carbon removal pioneer at University of Oxford. But the idea needed commercial definition, a roadmap, and someone willing to build the business from the ground up.

Ben joined in early 2019.

What followed was a radical transformation:

• Six months mapping the global carbon removal landscape
• Dozens of conversations with scientists, founders and policymakers
• A series of pivots to sharpen the business model
• A relentless focus on solving real, immediate commercial problems

Today, Tim remains the scientific north star, but Ben has taken Origen from research concept to a commercial venture now backed by top-tier strategic investors.

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So What Does Origen Actually Do?

The pitch is simple:

Origen removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere using limestone.

The process is not.

But here’s the simplest version:

1. Limestone is one of the most abundant minerals on Earth.
2. Origen heats it in a proprietary kiln to create lime, releasing a pure stream of CO₂.
3. The released CO₂ is captured and stored underground.
4. The lime is then used as a solid sorbent to capture CO₂ directly from the air.
5. Once saturated, it reforms into limestone, and the cycle repeats.

A regenerative loop. A circular carbon system. A pathway designed for global-scale deployment.

The advantages?

• Origen owns the full tech stack — kiln, contactor and process integration.
• Designed for industrial-scale rollout using proven components.
• A deployment model aligned with major industries, data centres and energy hubs.

This is carbon removal engineered for reality, not theory.

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Backed by Strategic Investors

To date, Origen has raised £22.5 million plus £3 million in grants. But who’s backing them matters even more:

• Shell – project development partner
• Barclays Climate Ventures – carbon market and finance expertise
• Hatch Engineering – world-leading industrial engineering
• MLC (Mississippi Lime Company) – the largest lime manufacturer in the US

These are partners with infrastructure, supply chains, industrial capability and global reach.

When you’re building hardware at megaton scale… strategic capital beats venture capital every time.

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2025: The Year Origen Proved the Impossible

This year, Origen:

• Activated their full demo facility in North Dakota
• Successfully moved from TRL4 to TRL7
• Completed 80% of their commercial FEED study
• Advanced development of their first commercial-scale project with Shell & Mitsubishi
• Built a multi-geography pipeline of early-stage projects

They are now standing at the threshold of commercial deployment, the moment every climate hardware founder works years to reach.

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A Multi-Trillion-Dollar Opportunity

Carbon removal isn’t niche. It’s not a side category. It’s not a small sliver of climate tech.

It is, as Ben puts it, the oil and gas industry in reverse.

The world needs:

• mitigation and removal

Origen sits squarely in the latter.

If successful, the first facility becomes a proof point. The second becomes an asset class. The third becomes an industry.

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Raising £5 Million Through Blue Earth Ventures

Origen is now raising £5 million (EIS eligible) to:

• Mature their Louisiana commercial facility
• Continue innovation and cost curve reduction
• Advance multiple project pipelines
• Move toward Final Investment Decisions (FID)
• Fund engineering and commercial teams through 2027

This round is about building momentum, and ensuring Origen’s first megaton-scale carbon removal facility becomes reality.

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Why Origen Joined Blue Earth Ventures

Origen is now an official Blue Earth Ventures Member.

Why?

Because capital alone is not enough.

Origen needs:

• Investors who understand industrial climate tech
• Governments open to engineered carbon removal
• Corporates who will buy high-quality removal credits
• Partners for global deployment

And that is the ecosystem we are building at Blue Earth.

Ben said it best:

“I’m motivated by steel in the ground. By building things that actually remove CO₂ from the air. That’s when this becomes real.”

We couldn’t agree more.

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The Future: Steel in the Ground, Carbon Out of the Atmosphere

Fast-forward five years:

Origen expects to have:

• Its first commercial facility online
• Revenue flowing
• A portfolio of megaton-scale projects ready for the 2030s
• A leading role in the global carbon removal economy

This is the decade where engineered solutions need to prove themselves at industrial scale.

Origen is one of the companies that can.

And Blue Earth Ventures is proud to support them as they take the next step.