Europe 2026: R290 overtakes R32 in heat-pump listings

EU refrigerant rankings: R290 takes the lead

EPREL now lists 540 propane-coded heat pumps versus 537 R290-coded units and 13,935 R32 units only if you read the raw declared strings literally — but on the normalized refrigerant reference, R290 is still a tiny 3.27% natural-refrigerant slice, so this corpus does not actually support the claim that R290 has overtaken R32 across Europe (market_index_snapshot) (refrigerant_universe).

That matters because the headline angle and the supplied counts diverge. In the market snapshot, R32 has 13,935 listings, while R290 has 537, plus 2 listed as R290A and 1 as R290a; even combined, that is 540, nowhere near R32’s level (market_index_snapshot). The same pattern appears in the refrigerant universe probe, which repeats 13,935 R32 declarations versus 537 R290, with only a handful of variant spellings beside it (refrigerant_universe).

So the news peg in the data is not an overtaking event. It is a mismatch between the article premise and the underlying EPREL-derived snapshot. Readers can inspect the current R290 catalog filter, the broader heat-pump catalog, and the live market index snapshot alongside the refrigerants reference.

How big is the lead, and what sits behind it?

Using the corpus as supplied, R32 leads R290 by 13,395 listings if R290 variants are consolidated to 540 total propane-coded units against 13,935 R32 units (market_index_snapshot). Against the full market universe of 60,989 models, that equals roughly 22.85% of all listings for R32 versus about 0.89% for consolidated R290 codes, a gap of about 21.97 percentage points (market_index_snapshot).

The next refrigerants behind those two are not close. R410A has 1,896 listings, plus 49 listed as R410a and 10 as R410, while R134A has 2 in the declared usage table (market_index_snapshot) (refrigerant_universe). After that, the remaining declared codes are effectively statistical dust: a series of one-off entries such as R420A, R423A, R23, R421A and others at 1 each (market_index_snapshot).

The reference table also helps explain why attention is shifting even if the listing count has not yet flipped. R290 is marked with GWP 0, while R32 is listed at GWP 771 and carries an F-gas phase-out date of 2027-01-01 in the reference table; R410A is at GWP 1,924 with a 2025-01-01 phase-out date, and R134a is at GWP 1,300 with a 2026-01-01 phase-out date (refrigerant_universe). That regulatory direction is visible in product conversations, but this specific snapshot still shows R32 dominating declared listings.

Which manufacturers are driving the switch?

The corpus does not include a manufacturer-by-refrigerant breakdown, so it cannot answer which brands account for half of all R290 listings, which single brand has the biggest R290 share, or which brands show the largest R290-versus-R32 catalog gap. That is not available here.

What it does show is how concentrated the overall EPREL universe is by manufacturer. Daikin Europe N.V. alone has 14,668 models, or 24.05% of all listed units; Mitsubishi Electric Europe B.V. has 5,575, or 9.14%; and JOHNSON CONTROLS HITACHI AIR CONDITIONING EUROPE SAS, SUCURSAL EN ESPAÑA has 5,207, or 8.54% (brand_share). The top five are rounded out by Bosch Thermotechnik GmbH at 3,602 models and 5.91%, and Ariston SpA at 2,618 and 4.29% (brand_share).

That concentration means any real refrigerant crossover, when it comes, will likely be driven by a small group of large portfolios rather than by the long tail of 777 manufacturers in the database (market_index_snapshot). For context, the leading brand alone lists more than the next two smaller top-15 brands combined: Daikin’s 14,668 versus Panasonic’s 894 and FERROLI’s 685 (brand_share).

You can track those portfolios on the manufacturer index or on brand pages such as Daikin Europe N.V., Bosch Thermotechnik GmbH, and Vaillant GmbH.

Where the market shift is strongest by country economics

On operating-cost economics, the most heat-pump-friendly electricity-to-gas ratios in the corpus are Sweden at 1.30, the Netherlands at 1.49, Portugal at 1.73, and France at 1.78; Italy sits at 2.00 (price_ratio). Lower ratios generally mean electricity is less penalized relative to gas, which tends to improve the heat-pump case.

If the question is how many of those markets are “also likely to accelerate the R290 shift,” the corpus only allows a partial answer. It can identify the favorable-economics countries, but it does not include country-level refrigerant adoption by listing, so it cannot quantify where R290 is already moving fastest. The best evidence available here is that several of the most discussed European heat-pump markets sit near the favorable end of the ratio table: Sweden 1.30, Netherlands 1.49, France 1.78, Italy 2.00 and Spain 2.79, with Germany much less favorable at 3.16 and the UK at 4.63 (price_ratio).

That suggests a split market backdrop: economics are supportive in some core markets, but not uniformly across Europe. The country comparison dashboard, country index, and country pages such as France and Germany are the right places to watch this next.

Is R290 broad-based or concentrated in a few brands and segments?

The corpus cannot answer the segment question directly either. It provides total model counts by heat-pump type — 30,452 air-water, 21,065 air-air, 9,228 heat-pump water heaters, 213 ground-water, and 31 water-water — but no refrigerant split by type (market_index_snapshot). So it is not possible here to say which type has the highest R290 share or where R32 is still strongest by segment.

What the snapshot does show is that the market is heavily centered on air-to-water listings and air-to-air listings, which together account for 51,517 of 60,989 models, or about 84.5% of the full database (market_index_snapshot). If a refrigerant transition is to become broad-based, it will have to show up materially in those two categories rather than only in niche segments.

The same caveat applies to brand breadth. Because we lack a brand-by-refrigerant table, we cannot test whether propane is already dispersed across many catalogs or concentrated inside a few specialist ranges. The current corpus supports only one hard statement: natural refrigerants represent 3.27% of the total listed market, so any claim that the transition is already broad-based would run ahead of the data (market_index_snapshot).

What the EPREL data implies for installers and policy watchers

The practical signal from this dataset is sharper than the original angle: R290 has not overtaken R32 in the supplied 2026 EPREL snapshot; R32 remains the dominant declared refrigerant by a very wide margin, even as regulation points toward lower-GWP options (market_index_snapshot) (refrigerant_universe).

For installers, that means the catalog reality is still an R32-heavy market, despite rising attention on propane. For policy watchers, the more interesting number may be the gap between policy direction and listing composition: R32 still covers about 22.85% of all listed models, while consolidated propane-coded entries are below 1% (market_index_snapshot). That is not a mature crossover. It is an early-stage transition story at best.

Anyone comparing current availability should use the R290 filtered catalog, the manufacturer profiles, and the leaderboards hub to see where product launches may start to close that gap.

Sources

refrigerant_universe — IPCC AR6 GWP table; EU Reg. 2024/573 phase-out schedule; EPREL declared codes. Snapshot: 2026-05-21.
market_index_snapshot — Househeating Pulse · Market Index v1, computed from EPREL Public API. Snapshot: 2026-05-21.
brand_share — EPREL Public API · brand-share aggregation. Snapshot: 2026-05-21.
price_ratio — Eurostat household band DC (electricity) / D2 (gas), latest semester. Snapshot: 2026-05-21.