Short read. This is a ~300-word brief based on the full analysis at Househeating Pulse. For the interactive charts, brand-level data, and source tables, open the original.
R290 has crossed the “visible in the data” threshold, but the EPREL snapshot still shows a highly concentrated transition. As of 2026-06-10, propane appears in 537 heat-pump listings out of 60,989 total models — just 0.88% of the catalog — while R32 remains the dominant refrigerant at 13,935 listings, or 22.85%. That 26x gap is the clearest signal in the dataset: Europe’s move toward lower-GWP refrigerants is real, but it is still structurally narrow.
The market shape matters here. EPREL is weighted toward air-based systems — 30,452 air-to-water listings and 21,065 air-to-air — with only 213 ground-water and 31 water-water models. Because the public tables do not expose refrigerant-by-type cross-tabs, the analysis cannot assign R290 share to each product class, but the catalog composition makes the likely battleground obvious: mainstream air-based segments, not niche hydronic corners.
Brand concentration is the second important layer. The top five manufacturers in the brand_share table account for 31,670 listings, or 51.93% of the market. Daikin Europe N.V. alone holds 14,668 models (24.05%), followed by Mitsubishi Electric Europe B.V. at 5,575, Johnson Controls Hitachi at 5,207, Bosch Thermotechnik at 3,602, and Ariston at 2,618. That concentration means any R290 expansion will be driven disproportionately by a handful of large catalog owners, not by the long tail of 777 manufacturers.
The catch: the source corpus does not publish brand-by-refrigerant splits, so it cannot name the exact top R290 makers or their individual propane shares. That data gap is part of the story. The full analysis on https://househeating-pulse.com/articles/europe-2026-r290-brand-share-by-maker maps what can be proven from EPREL, Market Index, and refrigerant declarations — and what still needs a deeper join.
Read the full analysis with live data for the methodology, source tables, and the current refrigerant leaderboard: https://househeating-pulse.com/articles/europe-2026-r290-brand-share-by-maker
Househeating Pulse aggregates 60,000+ EPREL-registered heat-pump models across Europe — efficiency rankings, refrigerant trends, country-level installed prices and subsidies. Data from EPREL, Eurostat, NASA POWER. Full analysis at https://househeating-pulse.com/articles/europe-2026-r290-brand-share-by-maker.
