The heating and cooling equipment specified today will still be running in the 2030s, which makes it worth understanding the forces that are quietly reshaping the market. Five of them — refrigerant chemistry, efficiency regulation, the move to heat pumps, digital controls and the professionalisation of installation — now influence almost every selection decision a specifier makes in the Western Balkans.
The refrigerant transition to lower-GWP A2L
The most consequential shift is chemical. High-GWP refrigerants such as R410A are being phased down in favour of lower-GWP alternatives, most visibly R32, which carries roughly a third of the global-warming potential and allows smaller charges for the same duty. R32 is classified A2L — mildly flammable — and that reclassification changes the engineering, not just the sticker.
A2L brings maximum-charge limits per occupied volume under EN 378, leak-detection requirements in some applications, and stricter rules on brazing, evacuation and storage. None of this is prohibitive, but it means design and installation practices built around A1 refrigerants can no longer be applied unchanged. Specifiers should expect A2L to be the default across split and VRF ranges and plan room volumes and pipe routes accordingly.
Tightening efficiency regulation
EU Ecodesign (ErP) requirements and the energy-label framework continue to raise the minimum performance a product must meet to be placed on the market, and to make the better performers easy to identify at the point of sale. Seasonal metrics — SEER for cooling, SCOP for heating — have replaced nominal ratings as the basis for the label, so a unit's class now reflects how it behaves across a whole season rather than at a single test point.
For projects that follow EU norms, the practical effect is a rising floor: equipment that was compliant a few years ago may no longer qualify, and label classes increasingly feed into tender scoring and building-energy calculations. Choosing above the minimum is usually the cheaper decision over the life of the asset.
The shift to heat pumps
Heating is decarbonising, and the reversible heat pump — long familiar as an air conditioner — is the mainstream tool for doing it. Air-to-air and air-to-water heat pumps deliver several units of heat per unit of electricity, and modern inverter-driven units hold useful capacity well below freezing, which matters in the continental winters of the region.
The implication for specifiers is that a cooling selection is now often a year-round heating selection as well. Sizing, low-ambient performance and the balance point against any back-up heat source deserve the same scrutiny as peak cooling load once did.
Digital controls and connectivity
Controls have moved from a convenience to a specification item. Inverter compressors, electronic expansion valves and networked controllers let a system modulate precisely and report on itself. Connectivity supports several things buyers increasingly ask for:
- Central and remote management of multiple units or sites from one interface.
- Integration with building-management systems over standard protocols such as Modbus or BACnet.
- Fault reporting and trend data that turn reactive call-outs into planned maintenance.
- Metering that supports energy accounting and, where required, tenant sub-billing.
F-Gas handling and certified installers
Regulation on fluorinated gases governs how refrigerant is handled, recovered and logged across an installation's life, and it ties directly to who is allowed to do the work. Handling refrigerant requires F-Gas certification, and the shift to A2L raises the bar on competence further still. Well-run projects now treat certified installation and documented refrigerant records as part of the specification, not an afterthought — both for legal compliance and for the warranty to hold.
These trends reinforce one another: lower-GWP charges, higher seasonal efficiency, heat-pump heating, smarter controls and certified handling are increasingly a single package rather than separate options. For equipment, documentation and technical support aligned to where the market is heading, explore our HVAC-R sector page.
This article is published for engineers and specifiers. For project-specific advice, contact our technical sales team at sales@eram-group.net.
