2026: R290 now leads Europe’s heat-pump refrigerant mix over R32

R290 has overtaken R32: the size of the crossover in EPREL

R290 now accounts for 537 EPREL-listed heat-pump models versus 13,935 for R32, so the headline claim of an outright Europe-wide lead is not supported by the supplied snapshot; R32 still leads by 13,398 models and by 22.0 percentage points of the full model universe, with shares of 22.85% for R32 and 0.88% for R290 (market_index_snapshot).

That gap matters because the current EPREL snapshot is large enough that a real crossover would be obvious. Househeating Pulse’s latest market index snapshot covers 60,989 heat-pump models from 777 manufacturers, giving a broad read on what brands have actually registered in Europe rather than what they have announced (market_index_snapshot). On this dataset, R290 is still a small declared subset, not yet the mainstream refrigerant across the total listed universe (market_index_snapshot).

There is also a classification wrinkle. The same snapshot reports a 3.27% natural-refrigerant share across all models, which is higher than the declared R290 count alone would imply, but the corpus does not provide a refrigerant-by-type or normalized-code table that would let us reconcile that difference precisely (market_index_snapshot). The refrigerants reference does confirm that R290 is propane with GWP 0, while R32 is an HFC with GWP 771 and a 2027-01-01 phase-out date in the supplied reference table (refrigerant_universe).

How many models sit behind the shift, and how much of the market each refrigerant now holds

The latest snapshot contains 60,989 models in total, of which 13,935 declare R32 and 537 declare R290 (market_index_snapshot). That translates to 22.85% of the full universe for R32 and 0.88% for R290; the remaining 76.27% of listings declare something else or no refrigerant code that appears in the summarized refrigerant table (market_index_snapshot).

Among the declared refrigerant codes listed in the corpus, “other refrigerants” besides R290 and R32 add up to 1,973 models, equal to 3.24% of the full universe and 12.40% of the declared-code universe shown in the refrigerant table (refrigerant_universe). Most of that residual is legacy R410A-family coding: 1,896 models as R410A, 49 as R410a, and 10 as R410, plus a scattering of one-off declarations such as R23, R420A and R423A (refrigerant_universe).

That leaves a much bigger blind spot than the seed suggests. The refrigerant table sums to 16,445 declared-code entries, far below the 60,989 total models in the full heat-pump catalog, so any claim about the “European refrigerant mix” needs to be read as a claim about the refrigerant-coded subset or about declared registrations, not the whole installed market (market_index_snapshot) (refrigerant_universe). The corpus does not provide the missing-code distribution, so it cannot show whether R290 is leading within unreported segments.

The brands driving the change: who is shipping R290 at scale

By sheer volume, the EPREL market is led by Daikin Europe N.V. with 14,668 models, followed by Mitsubishi Electric Europe B.V. with 5,575, JOHNSON CONTROLS HITACHI AIR CONDITIONING EUROPE SAS, SUCURSAL EN ESPAÑA with 5,207, Bosch Thermotechnik GmbH with 3,602, and Ariston SpA with 2,618 (brand_share).

Together, those top five manufacturers account for 31,670 models, or 51.93% of the entire EPREL universe (brand_share). Daikin alone represents 24.05% of all listed models, while Mitsubishi Electric adds 9.14%, Hitachi 8.54%, Bosch 5.91% and Ariston 4.29% (brand_share). That concentration means any future refrigerant crossover will almost certainly have to show up first in the portfolios of a handful of large brands rather than in the long tail of smaller registrants.

But the key brand question in the seed — how many models these manufacturers use R290 versus R32, and what share of all R290 comes from the top five — cannot be answered from the supplied corpus. The only manufacturer-level probe with refrigerant detail failed, and no brand-by-refrigerant table is included (brand_detail). So while readers can inspect brand portfolios via the manufacturer directory or the filtered R290 catalog, this dataset does not support a numeric ranking of which brands are driving R290 adoption at scale.

Where R290 is strongest by heat-pump type, and where R32 still dominates

Air-water units dominate the model universe with 30,452 listings, or 49.93% of all models, followed by air-air at 21,065, or 34.54%, and hot-water heat pumps at 9,228, or 15.13% (market_index_snapshot). Ground-water is much smaller at 213 models and water-water at 31 (market_index_snapshot). By type alone, the center of gravity in Europe’s EPREL universe is clearly air-to-water heat pumps, with air-to-air heat pumps second (market_index_snapshot).

The corpus, however, does not include refrigerant shares by heat-pump type, so it cannot numerically identify which type is most R290-heavy or most R32-heavy. That means the seed’s requested crossover-by-type analysis is not available from the evidence supplied. What we can say is that the main product families look quite different on performance averages: ground-water averages SCOP 4.77 and 18.45 kW, air-water averages SCOP 4.54 and 11.83 kW, and water-water averages SCOP 6.15 and 35.65 kW, though the latter is based on just 31 models (type_efficiency).

For air-air, average capacity is 5.41 kW and average outdoor noise is 64.1 dB, but no average SCOP is supplied in the type aggregation (type_efficiency). Hot-water heat pumps likewise lack SCOP and capacity averages in the corpus (type_efficiency). So there is not enough evidence here to say whether R290-heavy segments differ materially from R32-heavy segments; only the type-level averages themselves are available.

Efficiency check: do the highest-performing R290 models support the shift?

The corpus does not support a ranking of the top R290 models by efficiency. The dedicated probe for top R290 models sorted by SCOP returned an empty result set, so no model names, SCOP values or capacities are available to cite (top_models).

At a market level, the average SCOP across the full EPREL universe is 4.55 and average capacity is 9.3 kW (market_index_snapshot). Among large manufacturers, average SCOP ranges from 4.18 for Hitachi to 4.69 for Bosch, with Ariston at 4.66 and Mitsubishi Electric at 4.51 (brand_share). Those numbers show that strong efficiency performance exists in the broad market, but they do not establish whether R290 specifically is concentrated among top-performing units.

Readers looking for live performance tables can still use the top SCOP leaderboard, the air-water SCOP leaderboard, and the ground-source SCOP leaderboard. This article’s point is narrower: with the supplied data, the R290 efficiency case cannot be proven model by model.

What the refrigerant mix change means for installers and the next product cycle

The real takeaway from this snapshot is not that R290 has already displaced R32 in EPREL; it is that the corpus does not yet show that crossover. R32 remains the dominant declared refrigerant code at 13,935 models, while declared R290 stands at 537 (market_index_snapshot). For installers, that means the mainstream registered product base still points toward R32 availability and familiarity, even as regulatory and product-development pressure continues to favor lower-GWP options (refrigerant_universe).

What does look likely is that the next clear inflection will be visible first in registration behavior by major brands. More than half of all models come from the top five manufacturers, and nearly two-thirds of the universe comes from the top ten, whose combined count is 37,121 models or 60.87% (brand_share). If those firms pivot materially, the leaderboards hub and future market index snapshots should register it quickly.

For now, though, the numbers say restraint is warranted. The EPREL-based evidence supplied here supports a watchlist story on refrigerants, not a confirmed continent-wide crossover.

Sources

market_index_snapshot — Househeating Pulse · Market Index v1, computed from EPREL Public API. Snapshot: 2026-07-14.
refrigerant_universe — IPCC AR6 GWP table; EU Reg. 2024/573 phase-out schedule; EPREL declared codes. Snapshot: 2026-07-14.
type_efficiency — EPREL Public API · type aggregation. Snapshot: 2026-07-14.
brand_share — EPREL Public API · brand-share aggregation. Snapshot: 2026-07-14.
brand_detail — (probe failed — data unavailable). Snapshot: .
top_models — EPREL Public API via Househeating Pulse catalog. Snapshot: 2026-07-14.