Thanks to an innovative and customized plan from Green Mountain Power, Frank Giubardo had converted all heat and electrical needs at the Waitsfield Inn from fossil fuels to electrical.
The conversion means that he is avoiding burning 15,000 gallons of fossil fuel (propane and fuel oil) which means 333,000 pounds of carbon not being burned annually, according to Kristen Kelly at Green Mountain Power.
Giubardo said that he began working with GMP last summer on the conversion when GMP analyzed three years of fossil fuel consumption at the inn and offered him a plan.
“I agree to completely remove the oil system from the building and they provided me with a grant, which was combined with a low interest Efficiency Vermont loan which is underwritten by the Vermont State Employees Credit Union,” Giubardo explained.
The cost of the conversion was $106,000 and the grant covered 55% of it. The loan costs about $800 a month he said and his electric bill, for the first full month of heating the entire inn plus lights and fridge was about $1,200, he said. Previously, his winter electricity bill had been between $250 and $300 but his heating costs were $3,500.
“In the spring and fall the electric costs will be less and the cost of cooling the building will be a lot less than when we had window air conditioning units in each window. Those made the summer electric bills rise to more than $600 a month,” he said.
Annual savings, factoring in the cost of the five-year loan, will be $5,000 which will increase once the loan is paid off.
The inn now has a heat pump in each of the 18 rooms plus six more in the common areas. As part of the conversion a new electric panel was installed which gives him the ability to add a new dryer and also EV charging stations, two regular and one high speed.
Next up for Giubardo is solar panels on the roof of the building and he’s waiting for confirmation from the Vermont Economic Development Association as to what type of grant he will receive.
“People complain about Sleepy Joe Biden, but because of the massive infrastructure bill he got passed, there is a tremendous amount of money available to investing in green infrastructure,” Giubardo noted.
Beyond the carbon footprint and cost savings, Giubardo said that the heat pumps make for a much nicer guest experience when each room can be individually heated or cooled. Additionally, he said that having the rooms heated and cooled with fresh outside air made the rooms smell much better because of the clean air being pulled from the outside. This makes room turnovers much easier and more efficient because he and his staff no longer have to open windows to air out rooms during turnovers (which required a lot of fuel oil to reheat them).
Giubardo bought the Waitsfield Inn in 2021 and in January of 2023 he bought the Swanson Inn in Fayston. He plans to pursue a similar conversion at the Swanson Inn.
He said that working with GMP on a customized plan was a pleasure and chalked up some balkiness in the loan approval process to the fact that VSECU was merging with NEFCU at the time. His contractor, Lone Wolf Energy and owner Shawn Thurber, really drove the process forward, communicating with him, GMP an Efficiency Vermont daily to make it happen.
GMP’s Kristen Kelly said that the conversion plan put together for the Waitsfield Inn was part of the utility’s business innovation work where customized plans are created to switch businesses away from fossil fuels.
“For our business innovation programs, custom programs like this one are really tailored to what the business needs. In this case, he was looking to switch from fuel oil to heat pumps so his incentives were based on the carbon emissions that are eliminated,” Kelly explained.
In 2023 alone, GMP’s business innovation and incentive programs offset more than 626,000,000 pounds of lifetime carbon emissions, or the equivalent of not burning 2.4 million barrels of oil, she added.
For more information about GMP’s programs, email
