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Hydrocarbons work quite well and are (comparatively) minimal impact on climate change. There's been some paranoia about fires, particularly in automotive applications but it's actually a quite small amount needed to do the job.

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The problem are large building air conditioning systems, grocery store chillers and industrial machines - they contain an awful lot of coolant and are very expensive to replace which means they tend to last for decades.

Ammonia (another dead simple molecule/process) is used in these services quite often, as far as I know.

From what I understand, at least here in Europe CO2 has been common in recent supermarket and similar installations.

One can buy large building air conditioners that use water to move heat around. There will still be refrigerant somewhere in the system, but there won’t be long refrigerant pipes anywhere.

I don’t know how popular these are. I have seen multiple condo buildings with a water source heat pump in each unit. The usual suspects (Mitsubishi, Daikin, etc) have hydronic systems with outdoor heat pumps on their websites. Chiltrix markets a small-building solution.

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