Siemens and Ucaneo Inaugurate Germany's Largest Direct Air Capture Plant in Berlin, Pairing Electrochemical Capture With Geological Storage
Ucaneo and Siemens opened a 150-ton-per-year electrochemical DAC plant in Berlin's Marzahn district, Germany's first project to combine direct air capture with permanent geological CO2 storage.
Editor's Note ·
- Correction:
- The article attributes the claim that Ucaneo's process 'requires zero thermal energy, allowing it to run its capture loops flexibly alongside fluctuating renewable power generation and grid pricing' to Process Worldwide. That outlet's coverage only reproduces Siemens' press-release language ('integrates directly with renewable energy sources and responds flexibly to grid conditions and power market prices') and does not use the phrases 'zero thermal energy' or 'capture loops.' That specific wording is from Carbon Herald's report, which is also cited elsewhere in this article. The underlying fact is accurate and sourced; only the inline attribution was incorrect.
Overview
Berlin-based climate tech startup Ucaneo and industrial conglomerate Siemens inaugurated Germany’s largest direct air capture (DAC) facility on July 2, with Siemens confirming the plant carries a nameplate capacity of 150 metric tons of CO2 per year. The facility, located in Berlin’s Marzahn district according to H2 Bulletin, is also Germany’s first verified direct air capture project combined with permanent geological storage, as Siemens and Carbon Herald both report.
What We Know
- The plant uses an electrochemical DAC process, inspired by the human lung, that removes CO2 directly from ambient air and delivers high-purity CO2 at over 99.9 percent purity, according to Carbon Herald.
- The process is fully electrified and requires zero thermal energy, allowing it to run its capture loops flexibly alongside fluctuating renewable power generation and grid pricing, as Process Worldwide reports.
- Part of the captured CO2 will be permanently stored in geological formations, while the remainder can be used as a feedstock for climate-neutral products including sustainable aviation fuel, methanol, and food and beverage applications, according to Siemens.
- A follow-on commercial plant with roughly ten times the capacity of the Marzahn installation is already in development, with construction due to start next year, Chemeurope and H2 Bulletin both report.
- Ucaneo is targeting the annual capture of half a gigaton of CO2 from the atmosphere by 2035, an amount Siemens says is roughly equivalent to canceling out the entire annual CO2 emissions of Canada.
- Founded in Berlin in 2022 by Carla Glassl and Florian Tiller, Ucaneo now employs around 30 people and has raised approximately €17 million to date, backed by investors including Aramco Ventures, the Grantham Foundation, Nucleus Capital, and public funding from the German federal government, according to H2 Bulletin. That total includes a €6.75 million seed round announced in September 2024, per Aramco Ventures, which says Ucaneo’s technology has the potential to bring costs below €300 per ton of CO2 in the near future.
- Under the partnership, Siemens is deploying its Xcelerator portfolio as Ucaneo’s “preferred automation and digitalization partner,” providing what Siemens describes as comprehensive support across process automation, instrumentation and analytics, drive technology, and digitalization from the first-of-a-kind plant through commercial scale-up.
- “What Ucaneo has built is exactly what the energy transition needs: a Direct Air Capture process that is efficient, fully electrified, and ready for industrial scale,” said Christian Gückel, Head of Vertical Chemicals at Siemens Digital Industries, according to Siemens.
- “Building the carbon economy requires scalable and reliable infrastructure. Siemens is a key partner in helping us standardize and automate DAC systems,” said Florian Tiller, Co-founder and CEO of Ucaneo, per Siemens.
What We Don’t Know
Neither Siemens nor Ucaneo has disclosed the exact site or capacity of the geological storage location where captured CO2 will be sequestered, nor a firm construction start date for the follow-on plant beyond “next year.” The precise current cost per ton of CO2 removed at the Marzahn facility has not been published; Aramco Ventures describes only a forward-looking target of below €300 per ton.
Analysis
The Berlin plant is a small facility in absolute terms — 150 metric tons of CO2 per year is a fraction of the output from megascale DAC projects elsewhere, including the gigaton-scale ambitions previously reported across the direct air capture industry. Its significance lies less in scale than in structure: it is the first project in Germany to pair verified direct air capture with permanent geological storage, giving Ucaneo a domestic reference site to validate the electrochemical technology before its planned tenfold scale-up. The Siemens partnership, which extends beyond this single site to a standardized automation template intended for global rollout, signals that an established industrial automation supplier sees direct air capture as mature enough to warrant dedicated commercial tooling rather than one-off engineering.