The demand has been so high that Maria da Graça Carvalho, Minister of Environment and Energy, has acknowledged that the €60 million budget is almost exhausted, which is why the Government is already planning to launch a third phase of this program in 2026.

Registration for the second phase of the E-Lar program, which helps families replace old gas appliances with more efficient electric ones, began on December 11th.

The Minister of Environment and Energy stated that the budget allocated for this second phase, €60 million, is almost entirely used. “There is still funding available. The number of applications is very high; it’s almost at the end of what we had anticipated,” commented Maria da Graça Carvalho, quoted by the Jornal de Negócios.

She also noted that the average application value is between 700 and 800 euros, well below the limits of 1,700 euros for vulnerable families and 1,100 euros for the middle class. This is due to the fact that people are “applying with only one or two appliances, when they could apply with three,” she explained to the same publication.

Given the high uptake of the program and the need to increase energy efficiency in the country, the Government guarantees that it will open a third phase of the E-Lar program in the first months of 2026, this time with European support through the Social Climate Fund. But if there are delays from Brussels, the Executive guarantees that it will proceed with this third phase using its own resources. Note that these first two phases of E-Lar were financed with funds from the Recovery and Resilience Plan, the newspaper indicates.