Based on an article by Joanna Ryńska, “Rynek Instalacyjny” 4/2026
The F-gas certificate for personnel is, in the refrigeration, air-conditioning, and heat-pump industry, a mandatory document for many activities, and its standing applies across the entire European Union. In principle, it is meant to guarantee the quality and safety of the work. In practice, however, it has become such an attractive “commodity” that obtaining it is sometimes clouded by ambiguities, and occasionally by outright dishonesty and breaches of the rules. The question is: will the announced F-gas Act and the new certification rules manage to bring order to this system?
A decade has passed since the first F-gas Regulation and the launch of the certification of individuals and companies working with refrigerants. Poland now stands before another significant change of the rules, forced by EU Regulation No. 2024/573 — an amendment to the national F-gas Act and the issuing of implementing acts to it are needed. As a result, the open-ended validity of certificates will come to an end (they will be valid for 7 years), and the certification obligation will also cover those working with alternative refrigerants: hydrocarbons (including R290), ammonia (R717), carbon dioxide (R744), and low-emission hydrofluoroolefins.
The legislative work underway at the Ministry of Climate and Environment, approaching its first stage, has heated up the industry debate over the quality of Polish certification. Assessments vary: from the diplomatic “an imperfect system,” through “prone to abuse,” all the way to harsh words about “pathologies” and “trade in certificates.” Many representatives of the sector see an opportunity in the new rules — they hope these will give the regulator real tools to fix the market.
How Polish assessment bodies operate
In Poland, the role of the regulator — that is, the certifying body — is played by the Office of Technical Inspection (UDT). It maintains the register of “personnel assessment bodies” responsible for examinations; there are more than forty of them in the register. Under the F-gas Act, such bodies are either training centres (entered by UDT as “training bodies”) or research institutions.
Training itself is not mandatory, but candidates readily make use of it, because the scope of the examination requirements — both theoretical and practical — is broad. According to participants and lecturers, the greatest difficulties are caused by topics concerning environmental regulations and technologies alternative to F-gases.
Observations of the market and the experience of contractors show that reliable training, actually covering the statutory scope, requires at least two days (2 × 8–10 hours) of intensive work. By comparison, in Germany, Austria, and the United Kingdom such courses last a full week.
The examination — both theoretical and practical — also requires its own time. In line with the industry’s recommendations from the end of 2024, every examinee should perform the required task independently, and a single session should not include more than ten participants (unless there is one lecturer per four candidates). In Poland, training and examination are often combined into a single package; since the examination must be conducted by a body other than the one providing the training, such a block should take a minimum of three days.
Outline scope of the examination (personnel certificate, cat. I)
The following scope stems from Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) No. 2015/2067 and remains in force until the amended act and the new implementing acts enter into force:
- the fundamentals of thermodynamics, and the construction and operating principle of a refrigeration system;
- the impact of refrigerants on the environment and the related regulations;
- inspection of the system before start-up, after a prolonged shutdown, after maintenance or repair, and during operation;
- leak checking;
- environmentally safe handling of the refrigerant during installation, maintenance, servicing, and recovery;
- installation and maintenance of compressors (reciprocating, screw, scroll), condensers, and evaporators;
- servicing of thermostatic expansion valves (TEVs) and the other components of the system;
- making a leak-tight refrigerant pipe run;
- knowledge of technologies that reduce or replace F-gases and of working safely with them.
Is Polish certification in a bad state — and where does this come from?
In the UDT registers we find both institutions of established reputation (universities, industry organizations, recognized centres), present in the system since its launch in 2016, and entities advertising “training and examination with a guaranteed pass rate” — for a fraction of the market rates (e.g. PLN 150 “on promotion” versus around PLN 1,500 elsewhere) and in just a single day. Such offers circulate online, on social media, and in telephone conversations.
Most of them convey no real technical knowledge, but instead teach “to the test.” Groups are sometimes overcrowded, and the examination time is too short for it to proceed reliably and safely. Anonymous accounts indicate that questions are sometimes simplified or steer toward the answer, and the board is sometimes set on simply letting the examination “pass.”
The requirements imposed on the examinee are minimal: being of legal age and having no conviction for an offence against the environment. Neither education nor experience counts. This is why the easy acquisition of a “slip of paper” attracts unprepared people who want to enter the growing industry quickly. Added to this are a shortage of specialists, a reluctance on the part of some employers to invest in employee development, and the lack of criminal liability for obtaining a certificate in breach of the rules.
The consequences go beyond the sector’s image (in which there is no shortage of companies and technicians of the highest calibre). They amount to a real risk of faulty installation, poorer operating parameters of equipment, and threats to the health and safety of users — all the more serious because certification will soon cover flammable and explosive refrigerants. The problem is not, moreover, confined to Poland: it happens that residents of other EU countries make use of “easy” Polish certificates in order to bypass more difficult examinations at home. According to estimates by the assessment bodies, for every certificate obtained honestly there may be as many as three to five documents that raise doubts.
Why do unreliable centres continue to operate?
The reason is simple and unpleasant: there is demand. Too many contractors, legally required to confirm their competence, would rather pay solely for the document than for development with experienced trainers — of whom there is no shortage in Poland. The second problem is weak law, which gives the regulator little scope to penalize unreliable bodies.
An entity may be entered in the UDT register if it provides training or conducts research in the field of controlled substances and F-gases, has the equipment for practical examinations, and employs people with appropriate knowledge and experience. UDT inspects a body upon entry and thereafter at least once every three years; a negative result means removal from the register.
There are no provisions, however, that would prevent a removed centre from applying for entry again, or that would allow entry to be refused on the grounds of earlier misconduct. As industry representatives point out, dishonest bodies are sometimes interconnected — these are private companies standing behind several entities, so once one is removed, the examinations are taken over by the next.
What can be done about it?
As one of the author’s interlocutors put it, two phenomena are ruining the Polish industry: too-easy access to personnel certification, and the widespread trade in illegal refrigerants. We are coping with the latter better and better, thanks to new legal tools and the growing competence of the services — and repairing the certification system requires a similar set of measures.
At the end of 2024, shortly after EU Regulation No. 2024/573 entered into force, industry organizations prepared joint recommendations for the legislator. In the context of certification, the following are worth highlighting among them:
- limiting sessions to ten people, so that each performs the task independently (with a ratio of one lecturer per four examinees, parallel sessions would be possible);
- drawing up a new list of minimum equipment;
- additional requirements for examiners (among others: brazing, charging of pressure equipment, energy-sector qualifications);
- specifying the conditions to be met by the examination venue (including the safe preparation of the workstation);
- ensuring a sufficiently long practical examination time per person;
- at least thirty questions on the theoretical examination;
- replacing the simple register entry with accreditation of assessment bodies, conditional on reliable operation;
- broader powers for UDT — among others, the ability to halt an examination and immediately withdraw accreditation in the event of gross violations.
It would also help to raise the barrier to entry through prerequisites for candidates — for example, documented education and experience. A personnel certificate, including in its extended and time-limited form, should after all be proof of competence in a demanding, ever-changing industry, and not an easy pass into it.
The voice of PROZON’s president
According to Krzysztof Grzegorczyk, president of the PROZON Climate Protection Foundation, the scale of the illegal trade in F-gas certificates is enormous and may cover as much as 80% of the documents issued to date. As he recounts, he himself has recently received several telephone calls from a centre offering him a certificate; when he explained that he knew nothing about refrigeration, he was told that even such people manage to pass the examination. That — in his view — is what the “pass-rate guarantee” advertised online looks like in practice.
Grzegorczyk stresses that completing training and the examination within a single day is a fiction given the scope required by EU Regulation No. 517/2014 — a few-hour course is sometimes merely an instruction on how to pass the test without real knowledge. He points out that in extreme, though not isolated, cases now being handled by the prosecutor’s office, examination reports reached UDT despite the absence of a board — and even of the trainees themselves.
In his view, the key issue is the helplessness of the law: after a dishonest entity is removed from the register, nothing stands in the way of its applying for entry again. Without urgently equipping UDT with real tools of control and regulation, the situation will not change — and certification will soon cover flammable, toxic, and high-pressure refrigerants, so the stakes are ever higher.
The author thanks her interlocutors — representatives of training and personnel-assessment bodies and of industry organizations — for sharing their experiences and their perspective on the topic.
Based on: Joanna Ryńska, “Rynek Instalacyjny” 4/2026. rynekinstalacyjny.pl
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