Lisbon, April 15, 2026 (Lusa) - Portugal’s Environment and Energy Minister, Maria Graca Carvalho, said on Wednesday that €4 billion was "on the table" for the country’s power grid, including investment in distribution, transmission, and upgrades after the 2025 blackout.
During a parliamentary hearing of the Environment and Energy committee, regarding the 28 April 2025 blackout, the minister said this amount corresponds to the funding the government intends to authorise to strengthen the national electrical system's resilience and make a future large-scale failure less likely.
"We will authorise what is on the table, but it is not yet a final decision, about €4 billion for the grid, transmission and distribution," she said.
She explained that €3.04 billion is for distribution, €497 million for basic transport grid projects, €775 million for complementary projects and €133 million to an extraordinary approval already authorised.
The minister linked this financial effort to the blackout response, arguing the goal is to strengthen the electricity system and speed up recovery capacity in case of a new failure.
She added that if a new incident occurs, the priority is to ensure faster system recovery and greater autonomy for critical infrastructure, pointing to stronger 'blackstarts' (autonomous power plant restarts) and more testing.
She told the committee that "no country is prepared" to completely eliminate the risk of such an event entirely but said it is possible to reduce the probability and improve the operational response.
"As we saw what happened in the United States or Italy, [a country] can be better prepared, but none is completely prepared," she said.
Regarding measures adopted after the blackout, the minister recalled the government announced "31 measures" on 28 June, including a €137 million investment to "improve the operation and control of the electricity grid capacity."
Another line of action involves battery storage. She said the government had extended the current tender after a funding boost from the Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP, a European fund for post-pandemic economic recovery), bringing the total available to €180 million.
"We currently have €180 million from the RRP for batteries," she said, adding that the tender remains open until 23 April.
The minister also mentioned that the government expects to allocate €25 million, financed by the Sustainable 2030 development program, to pilot projects with batteries and renewable energy for self-consumption in critical infrastructure like health units, care homes and fire stations.
Furthermore, she explained that she decided to maintain four plants with blackstart capacity instead of only two, as the national grid operator, REN, initially planned.
Before the blackout, REN launched a tender to replace the two existing blackstarts with two new ones, but the government decided to keep all four infrastructures in operation. These include Tapada do Outeiro, Castelo de Bode, Baixo Sabor and Alqueva.
She said that strengthening blackstarts, expanding storage and grid investment should be seen as resilience insurance, but she acknowledged that these options have economic and tariff impacts.
The minister highlighted that one of the priorities is ensuring greater autonomy for critical infrastructure during future incidents, namely hospitals, health centres, care homes, fire stations and emergency structures.
SCR/LYT // AYLS
Lusa
