Whitepaper Release
Artus Air, a leading provider of heating and cooling solutions, has published a new whitepaper warning that developers and building owners face growing non-compliance and stranded-asset risk as F-Gas regulation tightens and refrigerant-heavy systems move towards obsolescence.
The whitepaper – ‘What the F(Gas) Do We Do Now? Reducing Refrigerants in the Built Environment: An Industry Perspective’ – argues that early intervention is essential to reduce financial exposure, sustainability compliance risk and the long-term impact of refrigerant phase-out across the UK built environment.
The whitepaper draws on conversations with a broad range of industry specialists to offer a frank assessment of where the built environment stands on F-Gas reduction and what needs to happen next. Its central aim is to open a wider conversation: one that moves refrigerant risk from the plant room into the boardroom, treating it with the same rigour as energy performance, embodied carbon and building safety.
Refrigerants have long been one of the least visible components of the built environment, hidden within plant rooms and ceiling voids, rarely surfacing in design conversations or investment decisions. That invisibility, the whitepaper argues, is precisely the problem.
With F-Gas regulation tightening across the UK and Europe, widely used refrigerants such as R410A and transitional alternatives like R32 are on clear phase-out trajectories. Yet many projects continue to specify them by default, often without a full understanding of the long-term implications for compliance, servicing costs or asset value. The whitepaper sets out to address this, calling for refrigerant risk to be treated with the same rigour as energy performance, embodied carbon and building safety.
The paper also raises the issue of PFAS – so-called ‘forever chemicals’ – present in many synthetic refrigerants, and other materials, adding further regulatory and reputational pressure to the status quo and accelerating interest in natural alternatives such as propane (R290), CO₂ and ammonia.
Rebecca Stewart, CEO of Artus Air. Image credit: Artus Air.
Rebecca Stewart, CEO, Artus Air said: “Refrigerants are no longer a peripheral technical issue. They sit at the intersection of design quality, regulatory compliance, operational cost and asset value – and the industry can no longer afford to treat them as someone else’s problem.”
“This whitepaper is our invitation to the wider sector to engage with a conversation that has typically been confined to specialists. We need developers, architects, investors and facilities managers all asking the same questions at the outset of projects: what refrigerants are in this building, what happens when regulation tightens further, and does our system selection reflect the reality of where legislation and the market are heading?”
Faraby Farid, Technical Lead, Urban & Energy at The Crown Estate, who contributed to the whitepaper, commented: “This whitepaper from Artus is addressing a lot of important issues relating to refrigerants. The good news is that viable alternatives do exist – water-based, refrigerant-minimal solutions that are already being deployed across a range of building types. The challenge is moving from pockets of best practice to a genuine shift in how the industry thinks and specifies. I hope this paper plays a part in that."
There are a number of key themes extracted within the whitepaper: refrigerants moving from a compliance issue to an asset risk; the retrofit challenges faced with using refrigerant-based solutions which could lead to stranded asset increase; the need for greater knowledge sharing and awareness raising on F-Gas across the industry; and why regulation should be the catalyst, not the ceiling.
The whitepaper is available to download here.