Househeating Pulse
EU Heat-Pump Market Intelligence

Comparison · 10 min read · Updated 2026-05-12

2026 heat-pump refrigerant price premium: R290 vs R32 in Europe

Using EPREL listings, this piece compares how much more R290 systems cost than R32 models across Europe, where the premium is largest, and whether higher prices line up with better efficiency or bigger brands.

How big is the R290 premium in 2026?

Using the EPREL-backed market snapshot as the base universe, Europe’s listed heat-pump catalog contains 60,989 models in total (market_index_snapshot / Househeating Pulse · Market Index v1, computed from EPREL Public API). Within that universe, R290 appears on 537 listings, while R32 appears on 13,935 listings (market_index_snapshot / Househeating Pulse · Market Index v1, computed from EPREL Public API). That means R290 accounts for roughly 0.88% of all listed models, versus 22.85% for R32, based directly on the listed counts (market_index_snapshot / Househeating Pulse · Market Index v1, computed from EPREL Public API).

That is the first useful context for any “green premium” claim: the EPREL universe is still overwhelmingly not an R290 market by count. Even the broader natural-refrigerant share across the whole catalog is only 3.27% (market_index_snapshot / Househeating Pulse · Market Index v1, computed from EPREL Public API). Buyers comparing the R290 catalog with the wider heat-pump catalog are therefore shopping a much thinner slice of the market than buyers looking at mainstream R32 units.

But the key price question in the brief cannot be answered numerically from this corpus. The registry extracts supplied here do not contain EPREL listed prices by refrigerant, by country, by brand, or by type. So the average percentage price premium for R290 versus R32, and the country-by-country ranking of that premium, are not recoverable from the data provided. The same applies to the requested “green-premium threshold” test by market: the corpus contains retail energy tariff ratios, but no heat-pump listing prices to compare against them.

What the corpus does support is the market structure around that premium: scarcity, efficiency, brand concentration, product mix, and the tariff backdrop across Europe. For readers wanting the broad market context first, the live market index snapshot and leaderboard hub are the two relevant navigational layers.

Where the premium is highest by country

The corpus does not include country-level EPREL prices for R290 and R32 systems, so it does not record where the R290-vs-R32 listed price premium is highest by country. Any ranking on that point would be fabricated, so it should not be published.

What the data does show is the energy-price backdrop that would matter if such a premium exists. In the latest household tariff snapshot, the lowest electricity-to-gas price ratio among reported markets is Sweden at 1.30 (price_ratio / Eurostat household band DC (electricity) / D2 (gas), latest semester), followed by the Netherlands at 1.49 (price_ratio / Eurostat household band DC (electricity) / D2 (gas), latest semester), Portugal at 1.73 (price_ratio / Eurostat household band DC (electricity) / D2 (gas), latest semester), and France at 1.78 (price_ratio / Eurostat household band DC (electricity) / D2 (gas), latest semester). At the other end, Romania sits at 5.11 (price_ratio / Eurostat household band DC (electricity) / D2 (gas), latest semester), the United Kingdom at 4.63 (price_ratio / Eurostat household band DC (electricity) / D2 (gas), latest semester), and Belgium at 3.90 (price_ratio / Eurostat household band DC (electricity) / D2 (gas), latest semester).

That spread alone is wide: from 1.30 in Sweden to 5.11 in Romania, a gap of 3.81 points in the electricity-to-gas ratio (price_ratio / Eurostat household band DC (electricity) / D2 (gas), latest semester). Readers can inspect the country context in the 32-country comparison dashboard, or jump straight to profiles such as Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czechia, or the country index.

For subsidy context, several markets pair high tariffs with meaningful support. Poland shows a maximum subsidy of €31,000 (country_compare / Eurostat · NASA POWER · EEA · Househeating Pulse subsidy register), Austria €23,000 (country_compare / Eurostat · NASA POWER · EEA · Househeating Pulse subsidy register), Germany €21,000 (country_compare / Eurostat · NASA POWER · EEA · Househeating Pulse subsidy register), and France €11,000 (country_compare / Eurostat · NASA POWER · EEA · Househeating Pulse subsidy register). Whether that is enough to offset any actual R290 list-price premium is a separate question; the supplied registry data does not include the prices needed to test it. The relevant navigational follow-up is the subsidy index and country pages such as subsidies in Austria.

R290 vs R32: what the EPREL market mix looks like

The refrigerant mix is not close. EPREL-declared codes show 13,935 R32 entries and 537 R290 entries (refrigerant_universe / IPCC AR6 GWP table; EU Reg. 2024/573 phase-out schedule; EPREL declared codes). In ratio terms, R32 appears about 25.95 times as often as R290 in the declared usage table (refrigerant_universe / IPCC AR6 GWP table; EU Reg. 2024/573 phase-out schedule; EPREL declared codes).

There is also a long tail of legacy or miscoded declarations: 1,896 entries use the uppercase form R410A and 49 use R410a, while several codes appear only once (refrigerant_universe / IPCC AR6 GWP table; EU Reg. 2024/573 phase-out schedule; EPREL declared codes). That matters because catalog cleaning and code normalization influence any market-share claim. The refrigerants reference and the site methodology are the correct places to inspect those definitions.

The regulatory context is also explicit in the corpus. R32 carries a GWP of 771 and an EU phase-out date of 2027-01-01 in the supplied schedule (refrigerant_universe / IPCC AR6 GWP table; EU Reg. 2024/573 phase-out schedule; EPREL declared codes). R290 is listed with GWP 0 and no phase-out date in that table (refrigerant_universe / IPCC AR6 GWP table; EU Reg. 2024/573 phase-out schedule; EPREL declared codes). Those are product-selection facts, not price facts, but they help explain why the R290 filtered catalog gets disproportionate attention relative to its still tiny listing base.

Do higher prices buy higher efficiency?

The corpus does not contain price fields, so it cannot show whether higher listed prices buy higher SCOP on a euro-for-euro basis. It can, however, answer the narrower efficiency question only partly.

Across the full market, average SCOP is 4.55 (market_index_snapshot / Househeating Pulse · Market Index v1, computed from EPREL Public API). By type, water-water models average 6.15 SCOP, ground-water 4.77, and air-water 4.54 (type_efficiency / EPREL Public API · type aggregation). HP water heaters and air-air units have no average SCOP reported in this aggregation (type_efficiency / EPREL Public API · type aggregation), so the registry does not support a full all-types efficiency comparison.

The requested refrigerant-level SCOP comparison between R290 and R32 is not available in the supplied corpus. There is no table here that reports average SCOP by refrigerant. Likewise, the question about the highest-SCOP upper tail being dominated by R290 or R32 cannot be answered numerically from the JSON block, because no top-SCOP list is broken out by refrigerant in the evidence provided.

The best supported inference is narrower: if buyers are shopping mainly in air-to-water models they are in the market’s largest segment at 30,452 listings (market_index_snapshot / Househeating Pulse · Market Index v1, computed from EPREL Public API), with an average SCOP of 4.54 (type_efficiency / EPREL Public API · type aggregation). If they move into ground-water models, the catalog is much thinner at 213 listings (type_efficiency / EPREL Public API · type aggregation) but average SCOP rises to 4.77 (type_efficiency / EPREL Public API · type aggregation). On paper at least, efficiency differences by product class are larger and better evidenced here than efficiency differences by refrigerant.

For upper-end performance shopping, the relevant internal reference is the live top SCOP leaderboard, plus the more focused air-water SCOP leaderboard and ground-source SCOP leaderboard.

Which brands and product classes are charging the premium?

Again, the corpus does not include brand-level or type-level price data, so it does not show which brands or classes are charging the largest R290 premium. It also does not record, within the top-brand universe, how many manufacturers have a material R290 presence. That would require brand-by-refrigerant cross-tabs that are not present here.

What can be shown is where market power sits. The top brand by EPREL model count is Daikin Europe N.V. with 14,668 listings and a 24.05% share (brand_share / EPREL Public API · brand-share aggregation). Next are Mitsubishi Electric Europe B.V. with 5,575 listings and 9.14% (brand_share / EPREL Public API · brand-share aggregation), and JOHNSON CONTROLS HITACHI AIR CONDITIONING EUROPE SAS, SUCURSAL EN ESPAÑA with 5,207 listings and 8.54% (brand_share / EPREL Public API · brand-share aggregation). Bosch Thermotechnik GmbH follows at 3,602 listings and 5.91% (brand_share / EPREL Public API · brand-share aggregation), ahead of Ariston SpA at 2,618 and 4.29% (brand_share / EPREL Public API · brand-share aggregation).

Among the top 15 brands, average SCOP ranges from 3.93 for Toshiba Carrier Europe S.A.S (brand_share / EPREL Public API · brand-share aggregation) to 4.69 for Bosch Thermotechnik GmbH (brand_share / EPREL Public API · brand-share aggregation). Daikin’s average is 4.44, Mitsubishi Electric’s 4.51, Ariston’s 4.66, and Vaillant GmbH sits at 4.54 (brand_share / EPREL Public API · brand-share aggregation). Those brand averages are useful when reading premium claims in the market, but they are not evidence of a refrigerant-specific markup.

Product-class concentration is easier to document. Air-water systems account for 30,452 models, or roughly half the total catalog (market_index_snapshot / Househeating Pulse · Market Index v1, computed from EPREL Public API). Air-air follows at 21,065 listings, and heat-pump water heaters at 9,228 (market_index_snapshot / Househeating Pulse · Market Index v1, computed from EPREL Public API). Ground-water at 213 and water-water at 31 are specialist segments by comparison (type_efficiency / EPREL Public API · type aggregation). If an R290 premium is showing up in Europe, the commercial significance will depend less on boutique ground-source niches than on whether it is sustained in high-volume air-water ranges.

What buyers in Europe should make of the green premium

The solid part of the 2026 picture is not the exact price premium; that number is absent from the corpus. The solid part is the mismatch between attention and scale.

R290 is strategically prominent but numerically small: 537 EPREL-listed models versus 13,935 for R32 (market_index_snapshot / Househeating Pulse · Market Index v1, computed from EPREL Public API). Natural refrigerants overall represent just 3.27% of the indexed market (market_index_snapshot / Househeating Pulse · Market Index v1, computed from EPREL Public API). So any premium is being charged in a relatively scarce offer set.

Efficiency evidence is also more mixed than some sales narratives imply. The market-wide average SCOP is 4.55 (market_index_snapshot / Househeating Pulse · Market Index v1, computed from EPREL Public API), and the strongest documented efficiency differences in this dataset are by system type, not by refrigerant: 4.54 for air-water, 4.77 for ground-water, and 6.15 for water-water (type_efficiency / EPREL Public API · type aggregation). Without a refrigerant-level SCOP table, the claim that R290’s higher price is broadly “paid back” through better seasonal efficiency remains unproven in this corpus.

Country economics complicate matters further. In lower-ratio markets such as Sweden at 1.30, the Netherlands at 1.49, and France at 1.78 (price_ratio / Eurostat household band DC (electricity) / D2 (gas), latest semester), electrification is facing a friendlier tariff structure than in Germany at 3.16, Poland at 3.71, Belgium at 3.90, the United Kingdom at 4.63, or Romania at 5.11 (price_ratio / Eurostat household band DC (electricity) / D2 (gas), latest semester). A buyer facing a meaningful upfront premium for R290 in a high-ratio country has a tougher economics case unless subsidy support is substantial. The practical next step is not a refrigerant explainer but a calculation: compare model options in the live catalog, then run the payback calculator, check national support through the subsidy calculator, and sense-check climate suitability in the climate-fit tool.

The short editorial reading is therefore restrained. EPREL-based market structure supports the idea of an R290 scarcity premium in 2026, but this corpus does not contain the price fields required to quantify it. What it does show is that buyers are paying attention to a refrigerant with strong regulatory positioning, tiny listing share, and no proven across-the-board efficiency advantage in the data supplied here.

Sources

  • EPREL Public API · brand-share aggregation — snapshot 2026-05-12
  • EPREL Public API · type aggregation — snapshot 2026-05-12
  • Househeating Pulse · Market Index v1, computed from EPREL Public API — snapshot 2026-05-12
  • IPCC AR6 GWP table; EU Reg. 2024/573 phase-out schedule; EPREL declared codes — snapshot 2026-05-12
  • Eurostat household band DC (electricity) / D2 (gas), latest semester — snapshot 2026-05-12
  • Eurostat · NASA POWER · EEA · Househeating Pulse subsidy register — snapshot 2026-05-12

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