Regulatory Certainty and Corporate ESG Mandates Are Driving Demand for Secon’s Hydrocarbon Chillers and Heat Pumps in Europe

Since our founding over 15 years ago, SECON has been a pure player in the industry: 100% of our chillers and heat pumps utilize natural refrigerants. We have never used synthetic gases and rely exclusively on pure hydrocarbons, such as R290 [propane], R1270 [propylene] and R600a [isobutane].

Our portfolio is one of the most versatile in the market, covering both water-cooled and air-cooled chillers with capacities ranging from just a few kilowatts up to 1.2 megawatts [341TR] per unit. In addition to our cooling solutions, we offer a wide range of air-to-water and water-to-water heat pumps as well as specialized booster heat pumps for high-temperature applications. For us, natural refrigerants are not a trend – they are in our DNA.

Demand is primarily driven by industrial process cooling – such as in the food and pharmaceutical industries – data center cooling and large-scale decarbonization projects. But we’ve also seen a significant surge in the HVAC sector where consultants and building operators are now standardizing on natural refrigerants for sustainable climate control.

In the past three to five years the market has shifted from niche interest to a mainstream mandate. This is reflected in our growth: Our turnover has nearly doubled over the last three years. This rapid expansion is fueled by the industry’s push for PFAS [per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances]-free solutions and the need for future-proof investments that go beyond the tightening f-gas regulations. With 15 years of experience, we are perfectly positioned to meet this increased demand for high-capacity hydrocarbon systems.

The adoption in commercial HVAC is driven by a powerful combination of regulatory certainty and corporate ESG [environmental, social and governance] mandates. With the EU F-gas Regulation and ongoing PFAS discussions, investors are prioritizing future-proof assets that guarantee compliance over their entire 20-year lifecycle.

Hydrocarbons like R290 and R1270 are no longer seen as alternatives but as the premium choice, offering excellent thermodynamic properties and high energy efficiency. For our customers, choosing natural refrigerants is a strategic decision to secure long-term investment safety while achieving top-tier environmental performance.

The primary barriers to a larger market share are strict safety codes for flammable refrigerants and a persistent knowledge gap among planners and installers. However, we address these challenges by leveraging our “safety by design” philosophy, which has been successfully proven in the field for over 15 years. Since our company’s inception, we have refined a safety concept that makes even high-capacity hydrocarbon systems as reliable as traditional ones.

A key solution is our specialized safety consultation during the sales and planning phases. By providing deep technical expertise early on, we eliminate uncertainty and ensure that every project is built on a foundation of proven safety. This active knowledge transfer is essential to overcoming technical hesitation in the market.

We address the growing demand for high-capacity systems through a versatile approach that combines high-performance individual units with modular scalability. While we are capable of building individual chillers and heat pumps with a capacity of over one MW, we also design these units to be easily combined into modular clusters. This allows us to deliver several megawatts of cooling or heating power for large-scale industrial projects and data centers.

We are closely monitoring the rapid growth of the data center sector, where the demand for sustainable, high-capacity cooling is surging. At the same time, we see a massive shift toward high-temperature heat pumps for industrial decarbonization. Consequently, our strategy focuses on refining our booster technology for district heating and expanding our hydrocarbon portfolio to meet the extreme reliability and efficiency requirements of modern data centers.

The ongoing PFAS discussion further reinforces our mission and validates our 15-year commitment to chemical-free cooling. Our goal is to demonstrate that natural refrigerants are the superior choice for both high-temperature heating and critical cooling infrastructure, offering a future-proof alternative to synthetic substances in every high-capacity application.

The real disruption will not be limited to a single sector. We are witnessing a fundamental shift where natural refrigerants are rapidly gaining traction across all applications. The coming years will see natural refrigerants move from being a premium alternative to becoming the absolute dominant standard in the commercial HVAC sector.

This transition is inevitable because natural refrigerants are the only solution that simultaneously addresses all major market pressures. They are future-proof against tightening regulations, offer high thermodynamic performance and are entirely free of the environmental and health concerns associated with synthetic chemicals like PFAS. In the near future, we expect that any HVAC system not utilizing natural refrigerants will be seen as an outdated technology as the industry fully embraces a truly sustainable and chemical-free cooling and heating economy.