October 30, 2026
Peer-reviewed: anti-frost coatings could cut heat-pump winter emissions by about 40%
Environmental Science & Technology has published “Anti-Frost Coatings Reduce Winter Emissions from Heat Pumps Without Compromising Comfort” by Shuhaib Nawawi, AegisCoat co-founder Anish Tuteja and Parth Vaishnav of the University of Michigan (June 9, 2026).
Air-source heat pumps lose efficiency in the cold because frost builds up on the outdoor coil. To clear it they run a defrost cycle, which cools the house and is usually offset by energy-hungry electric resistance backfill. The study asked what would change if the coil never frosted.
What the study found
- The team simulated heat-pump operation in about 7,900 single-family homes across 25 cold-climate U.S. cities.
- Compared with current practice, a coating that suppresses frost and avoids defrost cuts median winter emissions by about 40% (6.07 to 3.50 metric tons of CO2e per home, a 42.3% reduction).
- The other way to cut emissions is to switch off electric backfill, but that cools the indoors by 1 to 5 °C during defrost. An anti-frost coating gets the savings and keeps the comfort.
- At the high end of heat-pump adoption, the authors estimate the winter reductions could be comparable to roughly 30% of U.S. commercial aviation emissions in 2022.
The study assumes a coating that fully prevents frost. That is what Aegis-Clear does, and it is being proven in the real world: it is installed on a Mercedes EQS heat pump in testing at the University of Michigan, and in Detroit it delivered about 50% winter energy savings.
Read the paper in Environmental Science & Technology →
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