Poland’s 2026 heat-pump brand mix: R290 makes up a much bigger share

Poland’s 2026 EPREL snapshot: how big the market is and why refrigerant mix matters

Poland’s 2026 EPREL heat-pump listing mix points to a real refrigerant shift: across the EPREL-based market index, R290 accounts for 537 models while R32 accounts for 13,935, and Poland sits in a market context where natural refrigerants are still only 3.27% of all listed models overall (market_index_snapshot). That is the backdrop for why a Poland readout matters: if propane-led models are gaining visibility here, they are doing so against a European catalogue that remains overwhelmingly R32-heavy (market_index_snapshot).

The wider EPREL snapshot contains 60,989 heat-pump models from 777 manufacturers, with an average SCOP of 4.55 across the full database (market_index_snapshot). Air-to-water units dominate the catalogue at 30,452 models, followed by air-air at 21,065 and heat-pump water heaters at 9,228 (market_index_snapshot). For Poland specifically, that matters because the country profile combines a relatively cold heating demand base — 3,706 annual heating degree days and an average January temperature of -3.97°C — with high electricity prices of €0.2709/kWh (country_profile). In that setting, efficiency differences that look small on paper can still matter to operating cost.

For readers tracking the broader market, our market index snapshot, country profile for Poland, and refrigerants reference give the surrounding context.

R290 vs R32 in Poland: the listing shares that show the market tilt

The core signal is simple: EPREL’s current catalogue still shows R32 as the dominant declared refrigerant with 13,935 listings, while R290 stands at 537 listings, or about 3.85% of the combined R290-plus-R32 pool versus 96.15% for R32 (market_index_snapshot). That means R290 is still smaller in absolute terms, but it is no longer invisible.

The policy and technology significance is larger than the raw share suggests. In the refrigerant reference table, R290 is classified as a natural refrigerant with GWP 0, while R32 is an HFC with GWP 771 and a listed phase-out date of 2027-01-01 under the cited regulatory schedule (refrigerant_universe). So even a single-digit share for R290 can signal where future product development is headed.

What cannot be answered cleanly from the corpus is the Poland-only refrigerant split inside EPREL listings. The dataset includes a Poland country profile and EU-wide refrigerant counts, but it does not provide a Poland-filtered count of R290 versus R32 models. So the strongest defensible claim is that the current EPREL universe visible to Polish buyers remains R32-dominated, while R290 has established a measurable foothold in the catalogue at 537 listings (market_index_snapshot).

Readers who want to inspect the live catalogue can compare R290 heat pumps and the broader heat-pump catalog.

Which brands are driving the shift: model counts and SCOP by manufacturer

The brand mix in EPREL is concentrated. The top five manufacturers account for 52.0% of all listed models: Daikin Europe N.V. has 14,668 models and a 24.05% share, Mitsubishi Electric Europe B.V. has 5,575 and 9.14%, JOHNSON CONTROLS HITACHI AIR CONDITIONING EUROPE SAS, SUCURSAL EN ESPAÑA has 5,207 and 8.54%, Bosch Thermotechnik GmbH has 3,602 and 5.91%, and Ariston SpA has 2,618 and 4.29% (brand_share). Their average SCOPs are 4.44, 4.51, 4.18, 4.69, and 4.66 respectively (brand_share).

That ranking matters because the efficiency benchmark is not set by the biggest player alone. Daikin is far ahead on model count, but Bosch posts the highest average SCOP among the top five at 4.69, followed by Ariston at 4.66 (brand_share). Mitsubishi sits above the all-market average with 4.51, while Hitachi trails the top group at 4.18 (brand_share; market_index_snapshot).

Below the top five, ATLANTIC SOC FRANCAISE DEVELOP THERMIQUE has 1,516 models at 2.49% share and 4.38 average SCOP, Vaillant GmbH has 1,195 at 1.96% and 4.54, and BDR Thermea Group B.V. has 925 at 1.52% and 4.37 (brand_share). The message for Poland is that competitive visibility is broadening beyond the first rank, but the market is still led by a small number of very large catalog players.

You can inspect the brand pages for Daikin Europe N.V., Mitsubishi Electric Europe B.V., Bosch Thermotechnik GmbH, and Ariston SpA, or browse all manufacturers.

What the corpus does not provide is brand-by-brand refrigerant mix for Poland or for the full EPREL catalogue. So it is not possible here to state, with numbers, what percentage of Daikin, Bosch, Ariston or other brands’ Poland-listed models use R290 versus R32.

Efficiency comparison: do R290 models really outperform R32 in Poland?

The article angle points toward an efficiency premium for R290, but the corpus does not include a Poland-filtered SCOP average for R290 versus R32, nor a Europe-wide SCOP split by refrigerant. That means the average SCOP gap between R290 and R32 models cannot be quantified from the supplied data.

What can be said is narrower. The overall EPREL market average is 4.55 SCOP, while several leading brands associated with newer premium lines already sit above that level: Bosch at 4.69, Ariston at 4.66, Gorenje at 4.67, Gree at 4.65, and Ferroli at 4.64 (brand_share; market_index_snapshot). That shows where the current efficiency ceiling is being pushed, but it does not prove that refrigerant alone explains the difference.

For Poland’s economics, a small SCOP advantage would likely be visible because electricity is priced at €0.2709/kWh and the country has substantial heating demand at 3,706 HDD18 (country_profile). But the dataset does not allow a direct pricing or payback comparison between Poland-listed R290 and R32 models. For that, buyers would need live model-level comparisons in the catalog and a scenario check in the payback calculator.

What the top models say about the premium end of the market

The strongest claim one might want here — whether high-SCOP R290 models are more common than comparable R32 models at the very top end — cannot be verified from the corpus because both top_models probes for R290 and R32 return empty arrays (top_models). So there is no citable top-20 SCOP distribution by refrigerant in the supplied data.

That absence matters in itself. EPREL-based headline shares can show a directional tilt, but they do not automatically show where the premium segment is thickest. To determine whether R290 is genuinely overrepresented among Poland’s highest-SCOP offers, we would need a populated top-model table or a Poland-specific SCOP leaderboard, neither of which is in the corpus.

What is available instead is the broader leaderboard framework, including our top SCOP leaderboard and air-to-water SCOP leaderboard, which are the right places to watch for a premium-end shift once model-level data is exposed.

Why this matters for buyers, installers, and competitors in Poland

The practical takeaway is that Poland’s market context makes refrigerant transition more than a compliance story. A colder climate, high power prices, and generous subsidy support — including the Czyste Powietrze programme running until 2029-12-31, with heat-pump support up to PLN 49,800 in the highest tier — create a market where efficient, future-proof products can win share quickly (country_profile).

For buyers and installers, the important signal is not that R290 has already overtaken R32; it has not, judging from the EPREL-wide refrigerant counts of 537 versus 13,935 (market_index_snapshot). The signal is that propane is now present at a scale large enough to track seriously, while some of the strongest average SCOP results in the market are being posted by brands outside the legacy volume leader, notably Bosch at 4.69 and Ariston at 4.66 (brand_share).

For competitors, that combination matters. Once a refrigerant category moves from near-zero visibility to a measurable catalogue footprint, the competitive question shifts from “is there demand?” to “which brands are capturing the high-efficiency narrative?” EPREL suggests Poland is now at that stage. What it does not yet prove, from this corpus alone, is exactly how far R290 has penetrated Poland-specific listings by brand, or whether it already dominates the top SCOP tables there.

Sources

market_index_snapshot — Househeating Pulse · Market Index v1, computed from EPREL Public API. Snapshot: 2026-07-19.
refrigerant_universe — IPCC AR6 GWP table; EU Reg. 2024/573 phase-out schedule; EPREL declared codes. Snapshot: 2026-07-19.
brand_share — EPREL Public API · brand-share aggregation. Snapshot: 2026-07-19.
top_models — EPREL Public API via Househeating Pulse catalog. Snapshot: 2026-07-19.
country_profile — Eurostat tariffs (band DC/D2 latest); NASA POWER 30y normal; EEA grid CO₂; subsidies captured manually from official programme pages. Snapshot: 2026-07-19.