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After stints in oil and gas, the mining sector, and the US military, Brock Yordy now drills to produce clean, green geothermal energy.
To say that Brock Yordy has mud in his veins — a common descriptor of workers in the drilling trade — is an understatement. Yordy, 44, is a third-generation driller whose father and grandfather operated a water well business in Michigan. He grew up on construction sites, and although his life has taken some twists and turns, he’s always returned to the science and art of boring precise holes deep into the earth. After stints in oil and gas, the mining sector, and the US military (where he worked on humanitarian water well projects around the world), Yordy has become a staunch advocate of geothermal energy, promoting ideas for how the next generation of tradespeople could contribute to achieving net zero in heating and cooling.
But Yordy once almost turned his back on drilling. Housing starts in rural Michigan plummeted in the early 2000s, and the family well drilling business was “suddenly down to half the usual amount of work,” Yordy recalls. “I was working for my dad at the time, helping him keep the books and studying part-time at community college in the evenings.
“I told my dad I wanted to go to college full time,” he continues. “‘Dad said, ‘Great, you’re going to study business?’ I told him no, I wanted to study theatre and become a director one day. As awesome a father I had, I could see some disappointment in his face when he realized I wasn’t going to take over his business. But he said, ‘I’ll support that.’”
Yordy pursued a double-major in film and stage directing and groundwater science and city planning at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, graduating in 2006. He then faced a tough decision: “I could go off and continue theatre and film in Chicago, or accept a position with Baroid Drilling Fluids, a Halliburton company in Houston,” he says. “I sold out and went and worked for the man, drilling oil and gas.”
Yordy's job title was Fluids Engineer or, in drilling industry lingo, Mud Engineer. Drilling boils down to the “science of forcing water that’s been augmented by clays and special polymers to remove the cuttings from the hole,” Yordy explains. These additives (sometimes sonic vibrations and air are used as well) ensure that the drill bit keeps digging to the desired depth, cuttings are removed, and a precise, clean hole results. “We also look at the depth, the pressures of water and artesian flow, gas pressure and voids in the earth,” Yordy adds. “From there, we select the right drilling method that will bring cuttings up and keep the hole and surrounding ground intact.”
Working on massive projects targeting rare earth minerals and gold, he witnessed first-hand the pressures mining operations put on the environment — and local communities.
After working for three and a half years in drilling and fluids engineering, Yordy took a contract with the US military. He served as the trainer of record at Camp Atterbury, a 34,000-acre National Guard base in Indiana, preparing US Army drilling teams to construct and develop water wells as part of humanitarian work in Iraq, Afghanistan and Africa. “My job was to help out with drilling,” he says. He quickly discovered that the military system of training was “old and outdated.” Yordy adds, “I was young and cocky and I thought we could do better.”
He was invited to help modernize the regime, and soon he was called on to lead the training, adding new dimensions of safety and precision in drilling drawn from his experiences in oil and gas. It was Yordy’s first exposure to being a teacher, and he liked it. Another pivotal moment came in 2011, when he returned to Baroid-Halliburton to support mining operations in Latin America. Working on massive projects targeting rare earth minerals and gold, he witnessed first-hand the pressures mining operations put on the environment — and local communities.
The satisfaction of devising ways to reduce water usage in drilling by 80% at a mine in Peru were tempered by Yordy’s new appreciation for the impacts mining had Indigenous people. “We were working in the Atacama Desert,” Yordy recalls. “Mining needs water, but at the same time, we are taking it away from the communities who live there. Here in North America, people get a response when they express concerns. But for Indigenous people in Latin America — or anywhere in the world, for that matter — a big company truck shows up, runs a hose into a reservoir and starts pulling water, and no one has the wherewithal to speak up.”
It was a watershed moment for Yordy, and it hastened a 2014 decision to apply his trade for positive change, taking a job with George E Failing (GEFCO) Rig Manufacturing to develop more efficient and lower cost geothermal drill rigs. Geothermal energy wasn’t new to him: He had caught passing glimpses of it at his father’s company; and, working for Baroid-Halliburton, he supported drilling and fluids management for Triton Geothermal in a pioneering effort to convert Indiana’s Ball State University heating and cooling systems in a long-term project between 2008 and 2013. Geothermal heat loops and heat pumps utilize networks of drilled holes. The Ball State project included some 4,000 holes that create a sort of subterranean radiator and draw on the earth’s latent energy for heating and cooling. They’re far more energy efficient than air-source electric heat pumps, because the earth’s constant, subsurface temperature is close to comfortable room temperature, regardless of the time of year.
After working at Ball State, Yordy watched many other “legacy institutions,” including Notre Dame, Michigan State University, Stanford and several New England universities, launch geothermal projects of their own. “They’re seeing the lifecycle [of geothermal heat pumps] as almost infinite,” notes Yordy. “They’re looking to reduce their environmental impact while maintaining the beauty of century-old campuses. Adopting 21st century technology allows them to grow while reducing their energy usage. It’s like there’s a net-zero competition among these schools, with each trying to have the lowest carbon footprint.”
Currently, 1.3 million US homes have ground-source heat pumps. But a recent Department of Energy report predicted that number could jump to 7 million homes by 2035, reducing the country’s peak electricity demand by 12 gigawatts in the summer and 40 gigawatts in the winter, and possibly 80 million homes by 2050 — with an estimated seven gigatons of avoided carbon-equivalent emissions. The catch is that installing geothermal is more complex than a typical gas furnace or an air-source heat pump. “You also need the space within your home or your property to put in the drill hole loops that make the system work,” says Yordy. “We are seeing more wide-scale adoption with new builds, because you can install it and have the real estate back — you can build on top of the loops. You can’t do that with solar, for example.”
Geothermal heat loops and heat pumps utilize networks of drilled holes. … They’re far more energy efficient than air-source electric heat pumps, because the earth’s constant, subsurface temperature is close to comfortable room temperature, regardless of the time of year.
Yordy says a typical residential installation for a 1,500-square-foot house might cost $40,000. “But once it’s in the ground, it comes with a 50-year warranty,” he says. Leaders in the industry are currently exploring hybrid systems for high-rise apartments, where a building incorporates more than one heat pump technology to meet the heating and cooling demand, Yordy adds, as well as ways to use heat from wastewater treatment systems for heating.
The biggest challenge right now is finding drillers to do the work. The average age in the trade is 58, and 45% of these people will be retired by the end of the decade. That’s why Yordy co-founded the Geothermal Drillers Association last year, where he teaches courses in drilling, writing for trade publications, video blogging and podcasting — all in an effort to lure more people into the trade and keep momentum going. “It's time to get a new generation excited about working as drillers,” he says. “Working in geothermal, I am personally contributing to fewer emissions, which will make a better future for my six- and eight-year-old kids. I’ve worked on water drilling projects in developing countries. Everyone is crying or smiling when they see water coming up from the well, because they know that water is life. As geothermal drillers we are doing the same thing to lower our carbon footprint.”
