Europe 2026: the biggest heat-pump efficiency gap is not where you’d expect

The Europe-wide efficiency split: R290 versus R32 in the current market

The standout result in the 2026 EU snapshot is that the corpus does not provide a Europe-wide average SCOP for R290 versus R32, nor country-level SCOP by refrigerant, so the biggest “efficiency-gap” story cannot be quantified directly from the supplied data. What the snapshot does show is that R32 dominates the listed model universe with 13,935 models, while R290 appears on 537 models; together they account for 14,472 of 60,989 listed models, or 23.7% of all entries (market_index_snapshot).

That imbalance matters. In the current market index snapshot, R32 has a footprint about 26 times larger than R290 in absolute model count, even though R290 is the higher-profile refrigerant in many current policy and installer discussions (market_index_snapshot). The same dataset shows that so-called natural refrigerants account for only 3.27% of all listed models overall, underlining how early the transition still is at catalog level (market_index_snapshot).

The wider market context also helps explain why refrigerant debates can outrun actual shelf presence. The total heat-pump universe stands at 60,989 models from 777 manufacturers, with an overall average SCOP of 4.55 and average rated power of 9.3 kW (market_index_snapshot). By type, air-water heat pumps dominate with 30,452 models at an average SCOP of 4.54, while ground-water units average 4.77 across 213 models and water-water reaches 6.15 across just 31 models (type_efficiency).

Where the gap is widest and where it nearly disappears

The core country question in this brief — which country has the largest and smallest average SCOP gap between R290 and R32 models — cannot be answered from the corpus as provided. There is no country-by-country refrigerant efficiency table, and both top_models probes for R290 and R32 return empty arrays rather than model-level SCOP results (top_models).

That also means the article cannot verify, with corpus numbers, whether the biggest country gap is above 0.3 SCOP points or whether the smallest is below 0.1 SCOP points. Those are exactly the kinds of claims that would need a country-refrigerant cross-tab not included here.

Still, the supplied country and tariff data show where such a gap would matter most. The strongest electricity-to-gas price ratio in the dataset is Romania at 5.11, followed by the United Kingdom at 4.63 and Belgium at 3.9 (price_ratio). At the other end, Sweden sits at 1.3, the Netherlands at 1.49, and Portugal at 1.73 (price_ratio). If refrigerant-linked SCOP differences are material, they will have a very different commercial meaning in those markets.

For the broader country backdrop, the 32-country comparison dashboard and country pages remain the best way to see how tariff, climate and subsidy conditions diverge, even though the refrigerant efficiency split itself is missing from this snapshot.

How much of that difference is product mix, not just refrigerant label

One thing the corpus does support is that product mix is likely to be a major confounder in any refrigerant comparison. The market is not a single homogeneous category: air-water models average 4.54 SCOP, ground-water averages 4.77, and water-water systems average 6.15 (type_efficiency). Comparing refrigerants without controlling for type would risk attributing to gas choice what may actually be a type or application effect.

The model-count skew reinforces that caution. With 13,935 R32 models against 537 R290 models, any simple average will be shaped by where manufacturers have chosen to deploy each refrigerant — by segment, capacity, climate target and price point — rather than by thermodynamics alone (market_index_snapshot). Readers looking through the R32 catalog and R290 catalog are not seeing two like-for-like pools.

Brand structure points the same way. The largest manufacturer in the listing, Daikin Europe N.V., accounts for 14,668 models or 24.05% of the market, with an average SCOP of 4.44; Bosch Thermotechnik GmbH shows 3,602 models at 4.69, while Ariston SpA has 2,618 models at 4.66 (market_index_snapshot). A country’s apparent refrigerant advantage may therefore reflect which brands and sub-segments are most heavily marketed there, not just the refrigerant label itself.

The country context: tariffs, climate and subsidy backdrop

The tariff backdrop is unusually clear. Using the supplied household energy prices, 23 countries sit below the roughly 3.7 electricity-to-gas ratio threshold where a SCOP 4 heat pump would beat gas on running cost, while 4 countries sit above it and 5 have no gas ratio available in the table (price_ratio). The countries above that threshold are Poland at 3.71, Belgium at 3.9, the United Kingdom at 4.63 and Romania at 5.11 (price_ratio).

That means most listed countries are still in territory where a reasonably efficient heat pump should retain a running-cost case against gas, at least on this simple tariff ratio screen (price_ratio). But the margin varies sharply. France is at 1.78, Italy at 2.0, and Germany at 3.16; all three therefore present very different sensitivity to small SCOP changes (price_ratio). A 0.2-point efficiency edge is more economically consequential in Germany than in France, and more consequential in Romania than in Sweden.

Climate and subsidy conditions further complicate the picture. Poland combines high heating demand of 3,706.42 HDD18, a carbon-intensive grid at 661 gCO2/kWh, and a maximum subsidy of €31,000, the largest in the table (country_compare). Germany pairs 3,308.21 HDD18 with a subsidy ceiling of €21,000, while France has lower heating demand at 2,759.65 HDD18 and a subsidy ceiling of €11,000 (country_compare). Those differences shape which model families get pushed into each market — and thus could shape any observed refrigerant efficiency gap.

Why the finding matters for buyers, installers and policy

The immediate takeaway is not that one refrigerant has “won” on measured efficiency in every country. It is that the current corpus is strong on market size, type mix and country economics, but insufficient to prove the country-level R290-versus-R32 SCOP ranking the angle asks for. That absence is itself informative: policy and sales narratives can outrun the published, cross-comparable data.

For buyers and installers, this means the most useful comparisons are still local and segment-specific. A refrigerant headline without type, climate and tariff context is too blunt. For policymakers, the important overlap is between countries near or above the 3.7 ratio threshold and countries trying to scale mass-market adoption (price_ratio). If efficiency gains from one refrigerant family are real but small, they may matter most where electricity remains expensive relative to gas.

The market is also still heavily weighted toward incumbent portfolios. Manufacturers with the largest lineups — especially Daikin Europe N.V. and Mitsubishi Electric Europe B.V. — have outsized influence over what “average” performance looks like in practice (market_index_snapshot). That makes deployment strategy at least as important as refrigerant chemistry.

What this says about the next phase of the heat-pump market

The next phase looks less like a simple R290-versus-R32 contest and more like a contest over where high-efficiency product mix shows up first. Today’s listing still contains only 537 R290 models, against 13,935 R32 units and nearly 61,000 total models overall (market_index_snapshot). That is too early a stage to assume Europe has a settled refrigerant-performance hierarchy at country level.

What can be said with confidence is narrower. First, refrigerant share and efficiency are not the same thing: R290’s market presence remains small even as attention around it is large (market_index_snapshot). Second, country economics differ enough that any real SCOP edge would matter unevenly, from Sweden’s 1.3 ratio to Romania’s 5.11 (price_ratio). Third, any serious claim about a country outlier in refrigerant efficiency needs a transparent methodology and underlying model-level data, ideally published alongside the methodology notes and leaderboards.

Until then, the bigger analytical story is not a proven country winner. It is that Europe’s heat-pump economics are already highly local, while the refrigerant efficiency evidence in this corpus is not yet local enough.

Sources

top_models — EPREL Public API via Househeating Pulse catalog. Snapshot: 2026-06-15.
type_efficiency — EPREL Public API · type aggregation. Snapshot: 2026-06-15.
market_index_snapshot — Househeating Pulse · Market Index v1, computed from EPREL Public API. Snapshot: 2026-06-15.
country_compare — Eurostat · NASA POWER · EEA · Househeating Pulse subsidy register. Snapshot: 2026-06-15.
price_ratio — Eurostat household band DC (electricity) / D2 (gas), latest semester. Snapshot: 2026-06-15.