The German Association of Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Contractors (VDKF) reported that the average refrigerant leak rate in refrigeration and air conditioning systems fell to 1.0% in 2025. The figure is based on anonymized data from almost 67,000 system operators and around 307,000 refrigeration and air conditioning systems collected through the VDKF-LEC industry software.
Including accidents, the average leak rate across all system types — air conditioning systems, commercial refrigeration, industrial refrigeration and special systems — was 1.0% in 2025. In 2017, the rate was 3.2%, more than three times higher. Commercial refrigeration applications had the highest leak rate at 1.7%, while split air conditioning had the lowest at 0.4%.
According to VDKF, the reasons include increased awareness among operators and specialist companies of the environmental impact of direct emissions from fluorinated refrigerants, stricter requirements under the revised F-gas Regulation, expanded obligations for leak checks, tighter system construction and higher refrigerant prices.
VDKF stated that the share of direct greenhouse gas emissions from leaks is becoming smaller in relation to indirect emissions from energy consumption. A detailed evaluation of the VDKF-LEC data will be published in issues 5-6 and 7-8 of the association magazine VDKF Information, which will soon be available for free download on the VDKF website.
The VDKF-LEC software mainly records systems subject to a legal obligation for regular leak checks. Small systems are therefore only recorded to a limited extent.
