AtmosZero

AtmosZero Inc. is a Loveland, Colorado company developing "Boiler 2.0," a modular electrified steam heat pump that extracts heat from ambient air and, using electricity and a proprietary compressor, produces industrial process steam at temperatures up to about 150°C (roughly 300°F) without on-site combustion. The system is designed as a drop-in replacement for fossil-fired boilers and electric resistive or electrode boilers, sized roughly like a shipping container or long parking space so it can be installed into existing steam infrastructure without plant redesign; the company states installation takes days rather than months and can occur with zero downtime. It can also be water-sourced and integrated with a facility's process cooling loop or existing hot water systems.

The company reports a coefficient of performance of about 2 when delivering 2 bar (absolute) steam on a 15°C day, meaning roughly half the electricity consumption of conventional electric boilers, and states its 1 MW cascaded steam heat pump achieves approximately 70% effective turndown, operating down to about 30% of rated output. Because the system does not burn fuel, it eliminates on-site CO2, NOx, SOx and particulate emissions, addressing Scope 1 emissions in the boiler room.

Target applications span industrial electrification — brewing, food processing, pharmaceuticals, pulp and paper, specialty chemicals and fast-moving consumer goods — as well as low-cost district heat and steam for campuses and cities, commercial and office buildings, hospitals and life science facilities. Uses in chemical and pharmaceutical plants include batch processing, distillation, reactions, sterilization, clean-in-place, drying and heating.

Founding story

Addison Stark (MIT SM 2010, PhD 2014) worked on early-stage energy technology at the Department of Energy's ARPA-E, focusing on manufacturing efficiency, the energy-water nexus and electrification, and co-authored a 2020 Joule article, "To decarbonize industry, we must decarbonize heat," with Gregory Thiel. Concluding that a standardized, scalable electric heat pump was needed and that no one else would commercialize it, Stark approached Todd Bandhauer, a Colorado State University mechanical engineering professor and former ARPA-E awardee developing refrigerant compressor technology, proposing to quit his job if an air-source industrial steam heat pump was feasible. Bandhauer concluded it was, subject to a specific design approach, and together with former ARPA-E colleague Ashwin Salvi they founded AtmosZero, which press reports date to 2022.

Business model

AtmosZero designs and manufactures its Boiler 2.0 units in Loveland, Colorado and sells them as a standardized, mass-produced product rather than bespoke engineering projects, emphasizing lifetime total cost of ownership versus combustion and electric boilers.

Sale of modular electrified steam heat pump boiler units, with modules added as customer steam demand grows; the company also builds field service and application engineering capability around installed systems.

Traction

The first pilot installation began delivering steam in May 2025 at New Belgium Brewing Co. in Fort Collins, Colorado, and a 650 kW air-sourced steam-generating heat pump tested there with Colorado State University was presented at the 2026 ASHRAE Winter Conference. The company is in a "one-to-1,000" commercialization phase, designing and building systems in Loveland with volume deliveries planned to begin in 2027, targeting tens of units per year and then scaling toward 100 units annually.

Latest developments

In 2025 AtmosZero was awarded up to $24.3 million in federal 48C Qualifying Advanced Energy Project tax credits to support its manufacturing ramp, and in February 2026 it received a $1.8 million Colorado Energy Office Clean Air Program grant. Co-founder and CTO Todd Bandhauer was named to the TIME100 Climate 2025 list. The co-founders published a commentary in Joule arguing against waste heat recovery in favor of scalable, factory-built heat pumps, and the company published a white paper on its 1 MW steam heat pump's 70% turndown capability. Total funding reported as of March 2026 was $28.5 million.