Inauguration of Germany’s Largest Direct Air Capture Facility
Company brings industrial-scale carbon removal online just 18 months after groundbreaking, as speakers call climate action increasingly urgent.
Ucaneo opened Germany's largest Direct Air Capture (DAC) facility on July 2, marking what the company describes as the country's entry into an industrial carbon economy. The event, held at the company's new DAC Campus in Marzahn-Hellersdorf, brought together political leaders, industry executives and climate-tech investors to mark the transition from pilot innovation to commercial-scale deployment.
Built on Ucaneo's proprietary electrochemical platform, the facility is designed to capture CO2 directly from the air and supply it as a resource for industrial use — from fuels to chemicals — at a time when many industries are facing a shortage of pure CO2. Company founders Carla Glassl and Florian Tiller opened the event alongside Christian Rickerts of Berlin Industrial Group (BIG), framing the plant not merely as a new facility but as the starting point for a scalable carbon economy in Europe.
Notably, the project moved from groundbreaking to full operation in just 18 months — a timeline Ucaneo pointed to as evidence that carbon-removal infrastructure can be built at the pace the climate crisis demands.
"Instead of talking, we need to act."
That urgency was underscored throughout the morning's political greetings, with all addressing the pressing need for climate action —one felt acutely this summer, as a heatwave pushed temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius in parts of Germany and across Europe only a few days prior.
Markus Röhner, VP & Head of Engineering at Everllence, delivered an impulse talk before joining a panel on "Scaling the Carbon Industry," alongside Aaron Neuville (EY), Simone Less (Aramco Ventures) and Dennis Rendschmidt (VDMA Power Systems), moderated by Ucaneo's Olivia Suchy. During the discussion, Röhner delivered one of the event's sharpest lines on the pace of industrial decarbonization: "Instead of talking, we need to act."
The formal inauguration followed at midday, with the official opening of the Ucaneo DAC Campus and a building handover from construction partner Vollack. Attendees then toured the plant in groups and visited the newly opened "CO2 Store of the future."
Looking ahead, Ucaneo's next milestone is a commercial-scale facility in northeastern Germany with ten times the capture capacity of the Berlin plant, though a final site has not yet been selected. The company is targeting an opening in the first quarter of 2028, positioning Berlin's DAC Campus as a proof point for the much larger buildout to come.
