In one of those quirks that highlights the Catch-22 of ‘going 100% electric’, the opening of the government’s programme E-Lar yesterday suffered constraints due to the crashing of the IT system that manages the portal offering funding.
The temporary ‘blackout’ or ‘apagão’, as tabloid Correio da Manhã dubbed it (in a clear reference to the massive electrical blackout of last April) left the Environmental Fund’s system “practically inaccessible all day”.
According to a source for the Ministry of Environment and Energy, nonetheless around 3,000 candidacies had been registered by the beginning of the afternoon, “but difficulties were continuing in accessing” the relevant pages.
“Available soon” was the message received by a lot of people eager to ditch gas ovens and boilers and get vouchers to help purchase electrical replacements.
The same ministry source explained that three hours before the ‘race’ opened (at 11am on September 30), the IT system showed itself “incapable to support the elevated number of accesses”. There were, apparently, almost 400,000 attempts by people to take part.
The E-Lar programme is open to everyone – the idea being to wean the country off reliance on gas.
On Monday, before the ‘race’ to win funding began, Environment and Energy minister Maria da Graça Carvalho rejected criticism that this programme does not include any support for the purchase of heat pumps, and will simply end up giving families higher electricity bills.
She suggested that the €40 million in funding “won’t be sufficient” for demand anticipated, thus the government may divert money unused from the “Bairros Mais Sustentáveis” programme (focused on providing support for the insulation of homes).
According to Expresso – which admits that even yesterday evening it could still not access the page for candidacies – the government forecasts that 21,000 families will be able to benefit from E-Lar, 12,000 of them households on the ‘social tariff’, and 9,000 “of the middle class”.
Source: Correio da Manhã/ Expresso
