R290 in 2026: brand share rises faster than country adoption

R290 is rising in the brand rankings, but not evenly across the market

Just 537 of 60,989 EPREL-listed heat-pump models use R290 — 0.88% of the listed universe — even as natural refrigerants overall reach 3.27%, which is the clearest sign yet that brand-level momentum is outrunning market-wide adoption (market_index_snapshot).

That split matters because the catalog is large and still dominated by fluorinated options. R32 alone accounts for 13,935 listed models, while R410A adds 1,896 more and another 59 listings appear under spelling variants such as R410, R410a and other fringe codes (market_index_snapshot). Against that backdrop, the R290 catalog slice looks more like a fast-growing niche than a market standard.

The surprise is not that R290 exists in volume; it is that a few manufacturers are leaning into it much faster than Europe’s country conditions would suggest. The full market has 777 manufacturers, but the top 15 brands already control a large share of all listed models, led by Daikin Europe N.V. at 24.05%, Mitsubishi Electric Europe B.V. at 9.14%, and Bosch Thermotechnik GmbH at 5.91% (brand_share). That makes refrigerant strategy at brand level disproportionately important to what buyers and installers actually see in the market.

For a wider baseline, the market index snapshot and manufacturer leaderboard hub show how concentrated the catalog already is before refrigerant choice is even considered.

How much of the EPREL universe is actually R290 today

On a strict code basis, R290 appears on 537 models, equal to 0.88% of all listed heat-pump models in EPREL as of 2026-07-15 (market_index_snapshot). If you include the code variants R290A and R290a, the total rises only to 540 models, or 0.89% of the universe, so the headline does not materially change (market_index_snapshot).

That puts R290 far behind R32, which represents 22.85% of the universe with 13,935 models, and behind R410A at 3.11% with 1,896 models (market_index_snapshot). Put differently, there are about 26 R32 models for every one R290 model, and about 3.5 R410A models for every one R290 model (market_index_snapshot).

The broader “natural refrigerant” category sits at 3.27% of all models, but the corpus does not provide a brand-by-brand or country-by-country breakdown for that wider natural bucket beyond the explicit refrigerant code counts, so it is not possible to say from this dataset how much of that 3.27% is propane versus other natural refrigerants outside the declared code table (market_index_snapshot, refrigerant_universe).

Users comparing the full heat-pump catalog with the refrigerants reference will notice that the R290 story is still a thin slice of a much bigger installed choice set.

Which brands are driving the R290 push

The corpus does not include manufacturer-level refrigerant splits, so it cannot support a ranked list of brands by R290 portfolio share or by absolute R290 model count. That means the article cannot answer, with numbers, which manufacturers have the highest R290 share of their own portfolios or which brands contribute the largest absolute number of R290 models.

What it does show is which manufacturers have the scale to move the market once they do shift refrigerant strategy. The largest EPREL portfolios belong to Daikin Europe N.V. with 14,668 models, 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). Vaillant has 1,195 models and BDR Thermea Group B.V. has 925 (brand_share).

That scale explains the divergence angle even without the missing brand-refrigerant cross-tab. If only a handful of high-volume brands decide to accelerate propane offerings, their internal portfolio shift can look dramatic while the market aggregate remains stuck below 1% R290 share (market_index_snapshot, brand_share).

The missing piece is granular attribution. Without brand-detail data by refrigerant, the corpus cannot quantify whether the R290 push is being driven more by the biggest incumbents or by smaller specialists.

Why country markets are adopting at different speeds

Country conditions remain too uneven for R290 adoption to look uniform across Europe. The electricity tariff ranges from EUR 0.1082/kWh in Hungary to EUR 0.4042/kWh in Ireland, a spread of EUR 0.2960/kWh, or roughly 3.7x from low to high (country_compare). Gas ranges from EUR 0.0335/kWh in Hungary to EUR 0.2092/kWh in Sweden, a spread of EUR 0.1757/kWh, or about 6.2x (country_compare).

Climate varies almost as much. Annual heating degree days run from 492.27 in Malta to 5,039.96 in Norway, a spread of 4,547.69 HDD (country_compare). Grid CO₂ intensity ranges from 11 g/kWh in Iceland to 661 g/kWh in Poland, a 650 g/kWh spread (country_compare). Maximum subsidy swings from no active subsidy in many markets to EUR 31,000 in Poland, EUR 23,000 in Austria, EUR 21,000 in Germany and EUR 11,000 in France (country_compare).

Those differences matter because propane adoption is not driven by refrigerant policy alone. A market with cheap electricity, expensive gas, high heating demand and generous support can justify a faster transition than one with weak relative running costs and no subsidy support. Compare Belgium, where electricity is EUR 0.3499/kWh and gas is EUR 0.0898/kWh, with France, where electricity is EUR 0.2561/kWh and gas is EUR 0.1436/kWh; both are mainstream heating markets, but the operating-cost picture is materially different (country_compare, price_ratio).

The country comparison dashboard, climate-zones explainer and subsidy index together show why one refrigerant pathway will not diffuse evenly across all 32 tracked markets.

The cheapest-running markets versus the laggards

By electricity-to-gas ratio, the most favorable listed markets for heat-pump running costs are Sweden at 1.3, the Netherlands at 1.49, Portugal at 1.73, France at 1.78 and Italy at 2.0 (price_ratio). All five sit well below the approximate 3.7 break-even threshold referenced in the brief, which means heat pumps have a comparatively strong fuel-cost position there on this metric alone (price_ratio).

The bigger point is how many countries are still below that threshold. Of the 26 markets with a calculable electricity-to-gas ratio, 23 are below 3.7, one sits almost exactly on it — Poland at 3.71 — and only three are above it: Belgium at 3.9, the United Kingdom at 4.63 and Romania at 5.11 (price_ratio). Five additional markets in the country table have no gas comparator and therefore no ratio: Cyprus, Finland, Malta, Norway and Iceland (price_ratio).

That is a reminder that “country adoption conditions” are patchy in more than one direction. Some countries are favorable on running cost but weak on subsidies. Others have strong subsidy support but a less favorable tariff ratio. Poland is the sharpest mixed case: the highest maximum subsidy in the table at EUR 31,000, the highest grid intensity at 661 g/kWh, and a ratio of 3.71 that is effectively on the threshold (country_compare, price_ratio). Germany shows another mixed profile, with a high maximum subsidy of EUR 21,000 but a ratio of 3.16 and relatively high electricity at EUR 0.3869/kWh (country_compare, price_ratio).

What the split means for installers and policy watchers

The practical takeaway is that R290’s next phase will likely be decided by portfolio concentration before it is decided by uniform country demand. Market-wide, propane is still only 0.88% of listed models; country economics, climate and subsidies remain highly fragmented; and the corpus lacks evidence that adoption is already broad-based across manufacturers (market_index_snapshot, country_compare, price_ratio).

For installers, that means the availability of propane options may depend more on which brands they carry than on any pan-European market shift. For policy watchers, it means supply-side readiness can move ahead of demand-side conditions: manufacturers can expand R290 ranges faster than tariff structures, subsidy systems and national building stock economics converge.

If you want to track whether this divergence narrows, watch three places: the R290 product listings, the all-brand directory, and the country comparison dashboard. A genuine market turn will show up not just as more propane models, but as more countries offering conditions that make those models commercially routine rather than strategically symbolic.

Sources

market_index_snapshot — Househeating Pulse · Market Index v1, computed from EPREL Public API. Snapshot: 2026-07-15.
refrigerant_universe — IPCC AR6 GWP table; EU Reg. 2024/573 phase-out schedule; EPREL declared codes. Snapshot: 2026-07-15.
brand_share — EPREL Public API · brand-share aggregation. Snapshot: 2026-07-15.
country_compare — Eurostat · NASA POWER · EEA · Househeating Pulse subsidy register. Snapshot: 2026-07-15.
price_ratio — Eurostat household band DC (electricity) / D2 (gas), latest semester. Snapshot: 2026-07-15.