Industrial automation titan Siemens has formed a strategic partnership with German climate technology company Ucaneo to accelerate the commercialisation of electrochemical Direct Air Capture (DAC) technology. Siemens will act as Ucaneo’s preferred automation and digitalisation partner, utilising its Siemens Xcelerator portfolio to scale the technology from industrial pilot to a globally replicable commercial platform.
The announcement comes as Ucaneo prepares to inaugurate Germany’s largest DAC facility on 2 July 2026 in Berlin. With a nameplate capacity of 150 metric tons of CO₂ per year, the industrial plant is poised to become the nation’s first verified DAC project combined with permanent geological storage. A subsequent commercial facility, designed with ten times the capacity, is already slated to begin construction next year.
Ucaneo’s biomimetic technology is inspired by the human lung, utilizing an electrochemical process that removes carbon dioxide directly from ambient air to deliver a gas purity exceeding 99.9%. The fully electrified system integrates seamlessly with renewable energy sources, allowing operators to adjust production flexibly based on grid conditions and fluctuating power market prices. The high-purity output can either be stored permanently to generate certified negative emissions or used as a sustainable carbon feedstock for hard-to-decarbonise industries requiring sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), methanol, and chemical components.
Under the agreement, Siemens is providing an end-to-end framework spanning process automation, drive technology, instrumentation, and advanced analytics. Siemens’ process simulation software and controllers are already live at Ucaneo’s pilot facility.
For future commercial scaling, the partners plan to deploy Siemens’ advanced distributed control system, Simatic PCS neo. The system allows engineering teams to validate processes completely within a virtual environment before physical commissioning, significantly reducing technical and financial risk during scale-up. The ultimate objective is to create a modular, standardized automation template that can be rapidly deployed by Ucaneo and its licensed operators worldwide.
By 2035, Ucaneo aims to capture half a gigaton of CO₂ from the atmosphere annually — an amount roughly equivalent to the total annual carbon emissions of Canada.
Christian Gückel, Head of Vertical Chemicals at Siemens Digital Industries, stated that the partnership provides the exact standardized automation roadmap required to transition Ucaneo’s efficient, fully electrified innovation from a single plant into a rapid global rollout.
Florian Tiller, Co-founder and Chief Executive of Ucaneo, emphasized that building a robust carbon economy requires reliable infrastructure. He noted that the partnership with Siemens will help standardize and automate DAC systems to achieve cost-effective deployment at a true industrial scale.
