Exoikonomo 2026: through an energy supplier or an engineer?

Exoikonomo 2026 (the national home-energy subsidy programme) is expected to open late in the year with a budget of roughly €1.19 billion, targeting around 62,000 homes nationwide, with subsidies exceeding 80% of the cost including VAT for the vast majority of applicants and no income criteria in most categories (with extra support for vulnerable households — individual income below €5,000 or family income below €10,000). What makes this year's programme genuinely different, however, is not only the size of the subsidy but an institutional change that has rewritten the rules of the game: for the first time, a second route to delivery opens officially — through an energy supplier — alongside the traditional route through an independent engineer.

The change to Article 45 and on-bill financing

The legal basis for this change is an amendment to Article 45 of the Electricity Supply Code, included in the bill for the Social Climate Fund. The substance of the change is simple to describe but significant in practice: it now allows the cost of an energy upgrade to be repaid through the electricity bill — so-called on-bill financing. In practice, this means an energy supplier can take on the project (insulation, windows, a heat pump and so on), finance it, and the household repays the amount in instalments on its monthly electricity bill, instead of through a bank loan or cheques to a contractor.

The advantage of this mechanism is simplicity: a single bill, a single relationship, no separate banking process. The drawback is that it concentrates the design of the intervention, its execution and its financing in one and the same pair of hands — something that, as we will see, the country's technical bodies have not taken lightly.

The route through an energy supplier

In the supplier model you effectively hand over the energy upgrade "turnkey". The supplier takes on the energy audit, the choice of interventions, delivery through its own network of partners, and the management of the subsidy. The advantage is convenience: fewer steps, less time hunting for suppliers, a single point of contact. The main drawback, as technical bodies point out, is the absence of an independent adviser representing the owner's interest exclusively: the supplier earns both from selling energy and from designing the energy-saving programme, which creates — at least in theory — a conflict of interest between "sell me more energy" and "help me use less".

The traditional route through an independent engineer

The classic Exoikonomo route, as we know it from previous rounds of the programme, remains fully available and runs in parallel. Here an independent engineer carries out the energy audit, issues the Energy Performance Certificate before and after the works, proposes the best combination of interventions based solely on energy performance and cost, and supervises delivery by independent contractors of your choosing. The advantage is precisely that independence: the engineer has no financial incentive to sell you a particular service or piece of equipment. The drawback is that it demands more personal involvement — choosing an engineer, choosing contractors, coordinating the works.

In practice, our own experience delivering hundreds of Exoikonomo applications around Patras shows that having an experienced engineer who knows the local market, the reliable contractors and the pitfalls of the programme often saves more money than it "costs" in time and effort — especially when the application bundles several interventions (insulation, windows, heating system) that need to be combined correctly to maximise the home's energy upgrade.

Which route suits whom

There is no universally "right" choice between the two routes — there is the choice that fits your profile. The supplier route suits people with limited time to personally coordinate a renovation, those who want a single contact for the whole process, and those who already trust that particular energy supplier from other services. It also suits households with simple, single-dimension needs, where the risk of poor design is smaller.

The independent-engineer route suits those who want maximum control over quality and choice of materials, those whose home needs a complex combination of interventions that must be designed carefully to maximise the upgrade without wasting budget, and those who prefer to have someone at their side who is paid for their opinion rather than for the sale of specific equipment or services. In our experience, households with older homes, a low energy class and multiple points of heat loss are the ones that benefit most from independent design before delivery.

Tension in the market and the Ministry's position

The entry of energy suppliers as principal contractors of energy-saving programmes was not received without reaction. Technical chambers and engineers' associations have voiced concern about the risk of the market concentrating in a few large players, and about the conflict of interest described above. The Ministry of Environment and Energy, responding to these concerns, has clarified that the traditional route through independent engineers is neither abolished nor downgraded — it continues to run alongside the supplier route as an equal option for citizens. In other words, Exoikonomo 2026 does not "lock" you into either path; the choice remains yours.

What to prepare now

Whichever route you choose, there are a few steps worth taking before the platform officially opens:

• Gather your latest PPC (ΔΕΗ) electricity bill and the property's E9 tax declaration.
• Check whether you already hold an Energy Performance Certificate (ΠΕΑ) and how recent it is.
• Make a first inventory of the building's weak points and wear (window frames, insulation, heating system).
• If you are considering the engineer route, get in touch early — good engineers fill up fast once the programme opens.
• If you are considering combining the upgrade with solar, work out now what really pays off on your roof.
• If you are considering the supplier route, ask for a written breakdown of the work plan and the cost before signing — a serious company will not hesitate to provide it.
• Find out whether your household falls into a category with additional support (vulnerable household, large family, disability), as this can change the subsidy rate you are entitled to significantly.

What both routes have in common is that preparing the application properly before the platform even opens gives you a real head start, since programmes of this kind usually exhaust their budget well before the submission deadline. The readier your file is the moment applications open, the better your chances of getting in.

Exoikonomo 2026 genuinely brings more options than ever, but more options also mean a greater need for proper preparation. If your upgrade includes solar, try our solar calculator now to see how the cost and the benefit shape up in your case.