By Eamonn Ryan
At the 2026 Green Cooling Summit hosted by GIZ, Yosr Allouche, director general of the International Institute of Refrigeration (IIR), is introduced as the keynote speaker on a topic of growing global significance: ‘R290 as the Kigali Key for Efficient Room A/Cs’.
Yosr Allouche, director general of the International Institute of Refrigeration (IIR).
© RACA Journal
The session is framed as a response to a central and pressing question: Despite all the existing actions and policies, why is the transition to green cooling in buildings still lagging behind?
Allouche’s talk is situated within the context of the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, which aims to phase down high-global-warming-potential (GWP) refrigerants. Her focus is on R290 (propane) as a key enabler of sustainable, efficient, and climate-aligned room air conditioning (RAC).
From the outset, she emphasises that the debate around low-GWP refrigerants has matured. While in earlier years the discussion was dominated by environmental metrics – particularly the GWP of different refrigerants – the conversation today is far broader and more complex. It includes:
- Cost considerations
- Energy efficiency and system performance
- PFAS concerns and long-term environmental persistence
- Energy demand and the impact on electricity systems over the full life cycle of equipment
Within this expanded lens, hydrocarbon refrigerants, and R290 in particular, emerge as technically and environmentally attractive options. Allouche highlights several core advantages of hydrocarbons:
- No ozone-depleting potential
- Very low GWP
- Excellent thermodynamic properties, such as:
- Low pressure ratio between condensing and evaporating pressures
- Reduced compressor effort, translating into lower energy consumption
- Non-corrosive nature
- Excellent oil compatibility
These attributes make R290 and other hydrocarbons compelling alternatives to synthetic refrigerants, often achieving efficiency levels comparable to or even higher than those of common HFCs and HFOs in many applications.
However, Allouche is explicit that these benefits do not negate the need for strict safety protocols. She carefully distinguishes between flammability and lack of safety, stressing that safety depends on:
- Proper refrigerant selection for the right application
- Good engineering and system design
- Appropriate standards
- Qualified and continuously trained technicians
R290-based domestic heat pumps, when compared to other low-GWP refrigerants such as R152a or R1234yf, can also bring cost advantages, adding a further economic dimension to their appeal.
To help move beyond simplistic narratives of ‘natural vs synthetic’, Allouche introduces a comparative perspective on different refrigerant families:
- HFCs helped solve the ozone depletion problem but introduced high-GWP climate impacts.
- HFOs reduced GWP, but now raise questions around PFAS and long-term sustainability.
- Hydrocarbons deliver excellent performance and environmental benefits, but are flammable and therefore require careful management and robust safety frameworks.
Her key message in this opening segment is that the future of cooling will not rely on a single refrigerant. Instead, it will depend on selecting the right refrigerant for the right application, within a long-term regulatory and policy outlook. Within this mosaic, R290 is rapidly gaining a strong position in room ACs and heat pumps, especially in smaller systems.
This sets up a crucial next step in the presentation: understanding how R290 is spreading across different RAC applications, and what this tells us about the industry’s readiness to move beyond pilots toward large-scale deployment.
In the next part, we will look at how R290 is expanding into various AC configurations – from split systems to VRF – and why refrigerant charge reduction and safety engineering are central to unlocking its full potential.
