Portugal 2026: the heat-pump market moved faster than Spain on EPREL listings

Portugal vs Spain: the 2026 EPREL snapshot in one chart

Portugal’s 2026 heat-pump market is the smaller Iberian listing base, but it already sits much closer to the heat-pump-friendly running-cost threshold: Portugal’s electricity-to-gas tariff ratio is 1.73 versus 2.79 in Spain, against a rough 3.7 break-even benchmark for a SCOP 4 unit (price_ratio). That is the clearest hard number in the corpus for why Portugal can plausibly move faster on mix even if Spain remains the larger market.

What the corpus does not provide is a Portugal-versus-Spain EPREL model count split, country-level refrigerant mix by listing, country-specific brand rankings from EPREL, or country-specific SCOP distributions. Those questions cannot be answered directly from the supplied data. The available country dataset is cost, climate, grid and subsidy context, while the EPREL aggregations in this snapshot are Europe-wide, not broken out by Portugal and Spain (market_index_snapshot) (country_compare).

Still, the Iberian comparison is useful because both countries are in the warmer climate zone, yet their market context differs sharply. Portugal has lower household electricity at €0.2434/kWh versus €0.2669/kWh in Spain, but much higher gas at €0.1405/kWh versus €0.0955/kWh, producing the lower ratio that generally improves heat-pump operating economics (price_ratio) (country_compare). You can track the broader baseline in the market index snapshot and compare country context in the 32-country dashboard.

A smaller base, a faster mix shift: model counts and brand concentration

The first limitation matters: the corpus does not include Portugal-only or Spain-only EPREL listing counts, so the ratio of their listing bases cannot be stated from evidence here. The only market-wide count available is 60,989 listed heat-pump models across the tracked European snapshot on 2026-06-17 (market_index_snapshot).

Likewise, country-specific manufacturer rankings for Portugal and Spain are not in the corpus. What we can say is that the overall EPREL market remains highly concentrated at the top. Daikin Europe N.V. leads with 14,668 models and a 24.05% share, followed by Mitsubishi Electric Europe B.V. with 5,575 models and 9.14%, and JOHNSON CONTROLS HITACHI AIR CONDITIONING EUROPE SAS, SUCURSAL EN ESPAÑA with 5,207 and 8.54% (brand_share). That puts the top three on 41.73% combined share, and the top five — adding Bosch Thermotechnik GmbH at 5.91% and Ariston SpA at 4.29% — on 51.93% (brand_share).

That concentration figure is relevant to the Portugal-versus-Spain story even without country splits. In smaller markets, brand-mix changes can show up faster in listings if a handful of manufacturers alter product registration strategy. The corpus supports the structural point — top brands dominate the catalog — but not the Portugal-specific or Spain-specific concentration claim. For brand tracking, the manufacturer directory and leaderboards hub are the nearest internal references.

Refrigerants are the clearest divergence: R290 versus legacy gases

Here too the country-level split is missing. The corpus does not report what share of Portugal’s listed models use R290 versus R32, nor the same split for Spain. That cannot be answered directly.

At the all-market level, the refrigerant picture is still overwhelmingly legacy-HFC-led. R32 appears on 13,935 listings, while R290 appears on 537; R410A appears on 1,896, with smaller coding variants such as R410a on 49 and R410 on 10 (market_index_snapshot). Natural refrigerants account for only 3.27% of the total tracked market in this snapshot (market_index_snapshot).

The timing signal is clear even without Iberian splits. In the reference table, R32 carries a listed phase-out date of 2027-01-01, while R410A is marked 2025-01-01 and R134a 2026-01-01; R290 is natural refrigerant with 0 GWP in this dataset and no phase-out date listed (refrigerant_universe). So if Portugal is shifting faster than Spain, refrigerant adoption would indeed be the place to look first. Readers can inspect the R290 catalog, the refrigerants reference, and compare it with the broader heat-pump catalog.

Efficiency and type mix: is Portugal already moving up the curve?

The corpus does not provide average SCOP for Portugal versus Spain, and it does not provide country-level type mix. That means the SCOP gap between the two countries — and how much of it is explained by model type — cannot be quantified from this evidence.

What the Europe-wide EPREL snapshot does show is that type mix matters a lot. Average SCOP across the tracked market is 4.55 (market_index_snapshot). By type, water-water units average 6.15 SCOP, ground-water 4.77, and air-water 4.54 (type_efficiency). The listing base is dominated by 30,452 air-water models and 21,065 air-air models, while 9,228 are heat-pump water heaters; SCOP is not reported for the air-air and water-heater aggregates in this table (market_index_snapshot) (type_efficiency).

On energy class, the snapshot counts 23,466 listings in A+++, 8,924 in A++, and 16,845 in A+ (market_index_snapshot). That means A+++ already represents a large upper tier in the total market, but the corpus does not let us say whether Portugal has a higher A+++ share than Spain. For efficiency benchmarking, the most relevant internal pages are the top SCOP leaderboard, the air-to-water SCOP ranking, and the A+++ filtered catalog.

Price signals and running-cost context: where Portugal and Spain stand

The strongest Portugal-versus-Spain result in the corpus is the running-cost setup. Portugal’s electricity price is €0.2434/kWh and gas €0.1405/kWh, giving a ratio of 1.73; Spain’s is €0.2669/kWh electricity and €0.0955/kWh gas, giving 2.79 (price_ratio). Portugal is therefore 1.97 points below the 3.7 benchmark, while Spain is 0.91 points below it, making Portugal markedly closer to heat-pump-favorable parity on operating cost (price_ratio).

On climate and grid context, Portugal is much milder: 851.63 annual HDD18 versus 2252.02 in Spain (country_compare). Grid carbon intensity is slightly lower in Portugal at 153 g/kWh versus 158 g/kWh in Spain (country_compare). Subsidy support points the other way: Portugal shows €0 recorded maximum subsidy and 0 active subsidies, while Spain shows a €3,000 maximum subsidy and 1 active scheme (country_compare). That leaves Portugal with a more favorable tariff structure but weaker direct policy support in this snapshot.

The article brief also asks for average and “median-like” price/efficiency signals among the 15 highest-efficiency listings. The supplied corpus does not include prices or top-15 country-level model tables, so that question cannot be answered here. For scenario work, the payback calculator and country profile for Spain are the most relevant follow-ups.

What the market take means for installers, brands and policy watchers

The defensible take from this dataset is narrower than the headline ambition, but still useful: Portugal’s 2026 context is more favorable than Spain’s on household operating-cost economics, with a tariff ratio of 1.73 against Spain’s 2.79, while both sit in the same warmer climate zone and have similar grid carbon intensity, 153 versus 158 g/kWh (price_ratio) (country_compare). That combination can support faster product-mix change in Portugal even without a larger subsidy regime.

For installers and buyers, that means the Portuguese market has stronger underlying economics for efficient electrified heating, especially if manufacturers push more R290 models and more air-water units into local channels. For brands, the Europe-wide catalog is concentrated enough that registration strategy by a few large players can visibly alter smaller markets quickly (brand_share). For policy watchers, Spain’s advantage is not tariffs but support architecture: it has 1 active subsidy and €3,000 maximum recorded aid, while Portugal has neither in this snapshot (country_compare).

The unresolved part is the one the next data cut should answer: whether Portugal’s actual EPREL listing mix by brand, refrigerant and efficiency is already pulling ahead of Spain’s. This corpus establishes why that would be plausible; it does not yet prove the country-level listing shift itself.

Sources

market_index_snapshot — Househeating Pulse · Market Index v1, computed from EPREL Public API. Snapshot: 2026-06-17.
brand_share — EPREL Public API · brand-share aggregation. Snapshot: 2026-06-17.
refrigerant_universe — IPCC AR6 GWP table; EU Reg. 2024/573 phase-out schedule; EPREL declared codes. Snapshot: 2026-06-17.
type_efficiency — EPREL Public API · type aggregation. Snapshot: 2026-06-17.
price_ratio — Eurostat household band DC (electricity) / D2 (gas), latest semester. Snapshot: 2026-06-17.
country_compare — Eurostat · NASA POWER · EEA · Househeating Pulse subsidy register. Snapshot: 2026-06-17.