BLOG | DECEMBER 23, 2022
By Ben Turner, Chief Executive Officer at Origen
As we reach the end of 2022, it gives me great pleasure that the ‘construction’ phase on our 3,000 tonnes per annum zero-carbon lime plant – in collaboration with Singleton Birch – is now nearing completion.
This is a significant milestone for Origen and is the culmination of a huge amount of work from our team and Singleton Birch over the last 18 months, in addition to the time spent honing the engineering and design of the plant, sourcing partners and investment, and procuring the necessary materials for the build phase to even begin.
We are incredibly proud to achieve this goal – enabled by our world-class team, our industrial partner, Singleton Birch, and our network of local suppliers in the Humberside region that have helped make this possible, including Graytons, RJE, CLS, UAP, Ffister, InControl, PDC, and Hegwein among others.
A game-changing year
2022 has been a game-changing year for Origen. Here are just some of the things we have accomplished in addition to nearing construction complete on our pilot:
- Funding from Stripe:
A joint project between Origen and XPRIZE-winning Calcite, an 8Rivers company, was selected by Frontier, a consortium of leading tech companies including Stripe, Google, Meta, and McKinsey, to deliver carbon removals via a joint pilot between 2024 and 2025.
- Funding from UK Government:
Singleton Birch was shortlisted for Phase 2 in UK Government’s Industrial Carbon Capture Hubs program, with ~$200M of potential funding to build 150,000 tonnes per annum of decarbonised lime production capacity with Origen’s technology (“ZerCaL250”).
- Strategic Partnership with Mississippi Lime (MLC):
In August, MLC announced the acquisition of Singleton Birch, (our UK lime partner where the pilot plant is located) enabling further direct support on Origen’s pilot program and transition to scale-up projects.
- Validation from a top Climate-Tech Accelerator:
Origen was selected for Elemental Excelerator, a leading advisor to and supporter of top climate tech startups.
- New Policies for Carbon Dioxide Removal
The passage of the Inflation Reduction Act in the U.S., especially the enhancement of the 45Q tax credit to $85/ton for carbon capture and $180/ton for direct air capture, is a game-changing piece of legislation for the carbon removal industry and creates a profitable revenue framework to get projects built today.
Delivering on our promises
As you can see it’s been a fantastic year of significant progress. We often talk about the need for Blue Sky Doing if we are to truly make an impact on the planet-scale challenge that is tackling climate change and delivering on our mission of the atmosphere, restored.
This year of major milestones shows that we are staying true to that value and delivering tangible progress – technically, operationally and commercially – towards our goal of delivering giga-scale CO2 removal.
We are especially excited about the partners we are working with to make these goals possible. The size of the challenge in carbon dioxide removal means no one technology or company has the whole answer. We are committed to exploring and securing collaborations with key strategic partners, such as Singleton Birch, 8Rivers, Elemental, and Stripe that will enable all our roadmap milestones and accelerate our time to impact.
Looking ahead
Now that all the capital components of our kiln have been installed, our Singleton Birch plant will move into a commissioning phase over the next 3 quarters. This will allow us to verify the installation, and ensure the plant works safely as designed. After that, we will be able to get the plant online and run a series of tests to optimise its efficacy – and produce our first zero-carbon lime in 2023.
We also have a number of other major goals in 2023. We will be accelerating our Calcite-Origen pilot project, developing our scale-up opportunities, progressing R&D to become the experts of our lime, and continuing to scale our world-class team.
For all the pride and excitement we have had in 2022, 2023 stands to be even better!