The Future Homes Standard for 2025 aims to ensure that new homes and non-domestic buildings are “zero carbon ready”. It is highly unlikely that ‘green hydrogen’ will be piped through existing UK gas networks which rules out the use of hydrogen ready boilers in new buildings from 2025. The government’s direction for decarbonisation appears to be heat networks or heat pumps, with a target of 600,000 new heat pumps installed by 2028. The Climate Change Committee (CCC) warned last year that this figure was ‘significantly off track’.

By 2027 new EU Legislation will mandate that stationary split air conditioning and heat pump equipment with capacities below 12 kW must use F gases with a global warming potential below 150 and below 750 for larger systems. It is highly likely that the UK will adopt this Legislation. As such, the refrigeration and air conditioning industry is being driven to adopt refrigerants such as R290 (Propane) which has an ASHRAE classification of A3- lower toxicity-high flammability.

The use of flammable refrigerants were first used in systems for making ice in the 1850s and R290 in industrial applications. However, due to the excessive number of safety issues with flammable refrigerants, non-flammable synthetic refrigerants were adopted in the 1930s. Today, R410A is prevalent in many air conditioning applications and is classified as an A1 refrigerant, lower toxicity and no flame propagation. It is still widely used within the industry, however its availability in new equipment beyond 2025 is uncertain.

With the return of R290 refrigerants specialists within the refrigeration and air conditioning industry are calling for better training and the need for installers to ‘upskill’. Leak detection systems must be installed, and equipment must be within well ventilated areas with a sterile area from other electrical equipment of at least 1.5 metres around the equipment which will impact on plant space requirements for both existing and new build installations.