London, 02 June 2026 – Artus Air, a leading provider of heating and cooling solutions, today publishes a new whitepaper warning that developers and building owners face a growing risk of non-compliance and stranded building assets as F-Gas regulation tightens and refrigerant-heavy systems move toward obsolescence. The whitepaper, ‘What the F(Gas) do we do now? Reducing refrigerants in the built environment – an industry perspective’, sets out the case for urgent action across the UK built environment to minimise financial and sustainability compliance exposure as widely used refrigerants face accelerating phase-out, and the window to act narrows.
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.