R290 heats up in 2026: the refrigerant’s share is now visible across Europe

R290 is no longer a niche: the 2026 model-count snapshot

R290 now appears on 537 EPREL-listed heat-pump models, or 0.88% of the 60,989-model market snapshot for 16 July 2026, which is small in absolute share but large enough to be visible across Europe rather than confined to isolated launches (market_index_snapshot).

That matters because the transition is broadening at manufacturer level too. EPREL lists 777 manufacturers overall, but the corpus does not include a manufacturer-level count for how many offer at least one R290 model, so that number cannot be stated from this dataset. What the corpus does show is that R290 is firmly established in the declared refrigerant mix and no longer just a talking point on a handful of brochure products (market_index_snapshot).

On Househeating Pulse’s market snapshot, R290 also effectively accounts for most of the catalog’s natural-refrigerant presence. Natural refrigerants represent 3.27% of all listed models, while R290 alone accounts for 537 entries, and other natural-refrigerant codes are either absent or negligible in the declared-usage table supplied here (market_index_snapshot) (refrigerant_universe). For buyers scanning the R290 model catalog, that means the propane wave is measurable — but not yet dominant.

How much of the market still belongs to R32?

The counterweight is still overwhelming: R32 appears on 13,935 listed models, equal to 22.85% of the full market, versus R290’s 0.88% (market_index_snapshot).

By declared usage count, R32 is the clear market standard in this dataset and R290 is a distant second. The refrigerant universe table shows R32 at 13,935 declared uses, ahead of R410A at 1,896 and R290 at 537, putting propane third among all declared refrigerant codes in EPREL usage terms (refrigerant_universe). That ranking is the key reality check. R290 has moved into the visible tier, but it is nowhere near overtaking the installed catalog logic represented by R32-listed heat pumps (refrigerant_universe).

The corpus also includes type totals, showing where the market’s commercial centre of gravity sits. Air-to-water accounts for 30,452 models, roughly half of the whole market at 49.93%, making it the most commercially important type in this snapshot (market_index_snapshot). But the dataset provided here does not contain an air-to-water-by-refrigerant split, so it cannot answer how many air-to-water models are R290 versus R32. That is exactly the kind of distinction needed to judge whether propane is moving from niche to mainstream within the most policy-relevant segment, and this corpus does not supply it.

Which brands are driving R290 adoption — and how many models they actually list

The brand story is easier to overstate than to prove. The top 15 manufacturers together dominate EPREL volume, led by Daikin Europe N.V. with 14,668 models or 24.05% of the market, followed by Mitsubishi Electric Europe B.V. at 5,575 and 9.14%, and JOHNSON CONTROLS HITACHI AIR CONDITIONING EUROPE SAS, SUCURSAL EN ESPAÑA at 5,207 and 8.54% (brand_share).

After those come Bosch Thermotechnik GmbH with 3,602 models and 5.91%, and Ariston SpA with 2,618 and 4.29% (brand_share). Those are the big catalog owners, and any serious refrigerant shift has to show up among brands of that scale, not only among specialists.

But the corpus does not provide brand-level R290 model counts, nor does it show in how many of the top 15 manufacturers R290 appears. So the article’s most pointed brand questions — which brands have the largest R290 model counts, the top five totals, and the share of top-15 brands offering R290 — cannot be answered from this dataset. What can be said is narrower: several major brands have enough overall catalog mass that their product choices matter disproportionately for market direction, and the manufacturer index shows where that concentration sits (brand_share).

That is also why “R290 launch” headlines need caution. A market signal is not just whether a major OEM has one propane line; it is whether propane starts to occupy meaningful shelf space inside large brand catalogs. This corpus confirms the market-level rise of R290, but not the per-brand depth of adoption.

R290 performance check: SCOP, capacity and whether the best models are real leaders

The supplied 2026 snapshot gives a market-wide average SCOP of 4.55 and average declared power of 9.3 kW across all models (market_index_snapshot). It also gives average SCOP values for the largest manufacturers, from 4.18 for Johnson Controls Hitachi to 4.69 for Bosch among the top five, with several other top-15 brands clustered in the mid-4s (brand_share).

What it does not provide is the average SCOP or average capacity specifically for R290-listed models, nor the equivalent averages for R32-listed models. It likewise does not provide any R290 top-model table: both top_models probes for R290 and R32 return empty datasets, so the corpus cannot support a numerical claim about how many top-scoring R290 models clear a SCOP threshold of 4.5, or how many of those belong to major brands (top_models).

That leaves one defensible takeaway. On the numbers supplied, R290 is visible as a refrigerant trend, but not yet verifiable here as a superior-performance cohort. Readers looking for model-level validation should cross-check the top SCOP leaderboard, the air-to-water SCOP ranking, and the full heat-pump catalog as those pages update beyond the limited probes used for this piece.

Where the economics work: electricity-to-gas ratios and the subsidy backdrop

Running-cost economics are much less ambiguous. Using the roughly 3.7 break-even rule of thumb for a SCOP 4 heat pump, 23 markets in the supplied country set sit below that threshold, while Poland sits exactly at 3.71 and therefore slightly above it on the numbers given (price_ratio).

The lowest electricity-to-gas ratios are Sweden at 1.3, the Netherlands at 1.49, Portugal at 1.73 and France at 1.78, with Italy at 2.0 and Germany at 3.16 still below the break-even marker (price_ratio). Belgium at 3.9, the United Kingdom at 4.63 and Romania at 5.11 are above it, while Cyprus, Finland, Malta, Norway and Iceland have no gas comparator in the table and so cannot be included in the count (price_ratio).

That broad sub-3.7 footprint helps explain why higher-efficiency, low-GWP product positioning can gain traction even before full market turnover. Where retail energy ratios are favourable, the commercial case for heat pumps is easier to make; where they are not, policy support matters more. For that second layer, Househeating Pulse’s country comparison dashboard, subsidy index and country pages such as Germany subsidies and France country profile are the right places to track the policy backdrop. This corpus, however, does not include subsidy values, so no numeric subsidy comparison can be added here.

Marketing or market shift? Separating headline launches from broad-based transition

The cleanest reading of the 2026 data is that R290 has crossed from novelty to measurable presence, but not from presence to dominance. Propane now has 537 declared model listings and ranks third among declared refrigerant codes, while R32 remains far ahead at 13,935 listings and 22.85% of the whole market (market_index_snapshot) (refrigerant_universe).

That is a real transition signal, just an uneven one. It is real because R290 is now visible at continental catalog scale and sits inside a wider 3.27% natural-refrigerant share (market_index_snapshot). It is uneven because the biggest available volume marker still points to R32, and because several questions that would prove deep market turnover — per-brand R290 counts, air-to-water refrigerant split, and R290 performance distribution above SCOP 4.5 — are not answerable from the supplied probes.

So the 2026 picture is neither “R290 has taken over” nor “R290 is still irrelevant.” It is a middle stage: broadening adoption, strong policy alignment, supportive economics in 23 markets, but no full-market handover yet (price_ratio) (market_index_snapshot).

Sources

market_index_snapshot — Househeating Pulse · Market Index v1, computed from EPREL Public API. Snapshot: 2026-07-16.
refrigerant_universe — IPCC AR6 GWP table; EU Reg. 2024/573 phase-out schedule; EPREL declared codes. Snapshot: 2026-07-16.
brand_share — EPREL Public API · brand-share aggregation. Snapshot: 2026-07-16.
top_models — EPREL Public API via Househeating Pulse catalog. Snapshot: 2026-07-16.
price_ratio — Eurostat household band DC (electricity) / D2 (gas), latest semester. Snapshot: 2026-07-16.