Welcome to episode 132 of the Driller Newscast, a weekly update on the news and stories impacting the drilling industry. I'm your host, Brock Yordy, and right now, today (October 21, 2024), we are at the New York Geothermal Association's Brooklyn Conference, the Brooklyn Bridge, New York. Our feature this week will be with executive director Christine Hoffer of the New York Geo Association and we will be talking about the 10-year anniversary of the organization, which is a pretty big deal. We are five years and a few months away from our 2030 goals. To put it into perspective, the Paris Agreement, which was the legally binding international treaty on Climate Change, adopted by 196 parties at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP 21 in Paris France), was agreed upon on December 12, 2015. And it entered into force on November 4, 2016 at COP 22. 

Its goal is to hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below two degrees Celsius, which is above pre-industrial levels and pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degree Celsius. That's 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels. In the recent years, we've seen arguments around the world over the Paris Agreement, which happened eight years ago — two years after the first New York Geo Conference with the founding board. It's so important for us to think about this because you can look at studies that show in 1999, President Clinton's initiative for all federal buildings to go ground source geothermal, talked about at that time 400,000 ground source heat pumps across the United States. Now we're at 1.8 million. Between 1999 and 2010 we were regressed and part of that was because we didn't see clean energy as bipartisan. And so here we are again, 10 year anniversary, five years from a big significance, and we're breaking those 1.5 degree levels and this is because we have to decline our greenhouse gas production by 43% by 2030.

Yes, we have seen administrative changes. From President Trump announcing in the Rose Garden that he would be pulling us out of the Paris Agreement June 1st, 2017 to President Biden on his first day of office in January 20^th reinstating that we would be back in the Paris Agreement. This is all about allowing our atmosphere to release the greenhouse gas that it can and us to sequester or limit the rest. And so we're going to jump into this conversation with Christine Hoffer, executive director of New York Geo. It is very important for us to think about where we are today versus where we were 10-years ago and that they were 18-months and two years ahead of the Paris Agreement.  November 11, 2024 will be, COP 29, where we talk about this. Last year at COP 28, we were in Saudi Arabia where over 200 countries said they would limit their use of fossil fuels for heating and cooling and power generation and start the transition away from them to clean energies. Again, we can see with the significant weather events from atmospheric rivers to these massive hurricanes, polar vortexes and snowstorms, people freezing to death in Buffalo because they could not get off the roads because of all the snow. The significant weather events are real and greenhouse gases impact it. 

Let's jump into this great conversation. I hope you enjoy for this week's feature. We're going to dive into what's going on with the New York Geothermal Association. We have one of my favorite people in this industry. If you remember, a few newscasts ago, oh heck, a year and a half ago, we invited Christine on and I asked her what was new and she's like,” I'm brand new”. And now we're several conferences in — we’re going to Brooklyn and we're so very excited. There is so many big things going on drillers that we should be diversifying our business into. Engineers, young professionals, we don't hit our 2030 goals without more involvement and we have to hit those so that we can hit our 2050 goals. So I'm going to let Christine introduce herself and then we're going to jump into all the exciting things happening.

Christine Hoffer 

Hey Brock, thanks for having me. Thanks for allowing the opportunity for us to talk about New York Geothermal and what we're doing in general in New York State. Again, appreciate being here. Drillers, listen up!

Brock Yordy 

So, let's jump from our first interview to now — it feels like dog years, right? A lot has gone on.

Christine Hoffer 

That's true. But I'm still new. I'm still learning. So yeah, we are venturing into downstate, which we probably needed to do for a while now. Most people may not know, but New York State has some of the oldest housing stock in the country, and New York City is the largest city in the United States, with a lot of buildings producing a lot, a lot, a lot of carbon. So, our focus is going to be on geothermal energy and why it is the best solution for heating and cooling your building, decarbonizing, and electrification.

Brock Yordy 

We have site tours. We have a lot to introduce new people to the industry and to all the great things that are happening. We have policymaking going on. We're going to talk about uplifting the professionalism side from regulations to test bores to drilling in urban markets on the drilling side. Let's go beyond the conference of Brooklyn. All of this is because our future is bright, but we need to recruit. Would you agree?

Christine Hoffer 

One hundred percent. I just did a job fair with a group called Career Jam, where we were able to chat with eighth and ninth-grade students about what they are looking at for their next step, which is interesting because none of them know what they really want to do, which is okay and good actually. So we're able to introduce fresh new minds to the concept of geothermal and the variety of jobs that are associated with geothermal and instill in them a wanting to stay in school. But if you choose to go directly into the trades that this is a great path. In New York, we have a program called BOCES, and not all of them, but some of them have an HVAC program. So students can come out of high school with their 500 hours of HVAC, and if I'm successful or NY-Geo is successful, we'll be able to introduce the iteration of the accredited installer training program at BOCES. So those students can come out of high school and go right into the industry with accredited installer training. But in general, we just don't have enough of all of the people that we need to ensure that geothermal installations are successful. 

So training will be — I think should be — a big focus for all of us workforce development, transitioning our traditional fossil fuel delivery folks into understanding geothermal and being able to take care of that ground source heat pump. So instead of working on your fossil fuel boiler, they're going to come in, take care of your ground source heat pump. The same thing with our pipe fitters, duct workers, drillers, and excavators. I think there's a lot of opportunities within our industry that you don't see in the air source industry. So as an industry, we are job creators as well, and we are able to transition people that might fear electrification, we can transition them to our industry pretty smoothly.

Brock Yordy 

I think it's very important that transition. We're five years, two months, one week from our 2030 goals. And so getting a new generation inspired in high school helps us, and we have IRA until 2033. But we just saw with Climate Week that the UN has the future packed, and they're looking at the amount of carbon we're producing and what our breaking point of that 200 cubic meters of carbon that our atmosphere at that point we can't break past. And we're going to see that 1.5 degrees Celsius tip. And so we have new generations coming in, but at this point, when I'm at the grocery store, I see somebody and I go, do you enjoy your job? And they're like, I'd like to do something bigger. I'm wondering if you have heard of the excellent book Ground Source Geothermal. Because we're at a point where we have 2030 goals to hit, and we have 2050 goals to hit. And truly the future is we're developing where it's going to be.

Christine Hoffer 

Right. It's also exciting for our conference because we're attracting people from across the pond, as I say. So we have several people that are coming from the UK, from Sweden, from France to come to our conference and to talk about geothermal. At the last conference, we had people from 23 different states come together, and I think it's amazing that NY-Geo and IGSHPA have a platform, as well as the other state associations, to talk together. And how do we then talk to the consumer? How do we talk to that person that we want to come into the industry? So I'm hopeful that we can have more of those conversations as we move into maybe April at that conference and in platforms like this where we're talking to people that are in the industry, but how do we get more people to come into the industry and want to work in our industry?

And I think we show them that there's just a variety of jobs. So you want to be an engineer, and you want to design the system, great. Geothermal is your place. If you want to be a tech and be hands-on and get right in there in that heat pump, great. We have a job for you. If you want to be in manufacturing and creating those heat pumps, great. There's a job for you. So I think we need to do a better job of that as well of talking to everybody about the jobs that our industry can create versus other types of heat pumps.

Brock Yordy 

It's really important with New York City being the US’s largest city in the country, but we're a democracy. We have lots of different discussions and policymaking processes. And to watch our largest city in the country with a New York Geothermal Association and NYSERDA and IGSHPA and these policies — not to mention it's densely, densely populated on an island — if we can show that with bipartisan support the state of New York can incite this kind of change while also honoring and maintaining our history, that is important for people from around the world to witness and be part of. 

If we can do it in New York, it’s really easy to see it happen in Iowa City. We have a lofty expectation of Local Law 97 and with everything that is happening. Governor Hochul has done a heck of a job of thermal jobs or thermal networks and jobs act. From the first time I attended 2022 I saw how it was a melting pot, it is everything that New York City has always been. It's all sorts of different minds and opportunities and innovations, and it's beautiful. And that's my elevator pitch for NY-Geo because it is just such an immersion.

Christine Hoffer 

Yeah. And it's important to also talk about our partners in making these types of events happen, not just us, it's all of our sponsors. We're very thankful to ConEd for being our presenting sponsor, they're the utility provider for Brooklyn. And NYSERDA is a big sponsor. Climate Control Group is a big sponsor. WaterFurnace is a big sponsor; those are big names in the industry and across the board. We can't do what we do without those participants and we're very thankful to The Driller. The Driller is helping us produce a printed program that gives people something to read on the airplane when they return. So the program that The Driller is producing will also include a lot of great content, and it's those partnerships that are being stronger together.

The state association groups have this town hall with IGSHPA, and we talked about all of our challenges, which are all the same. We all have the exact same challenges. The ACT Group, which is the Advocacy Communication Taskforce that IGSHPA put together, meets once a month, and we talk about how we can elevate each other and what we can do to work together to have that unified message. We're very excited to talk about and present International Geothermal Month, which will again be in April. We're talking about some really great fun things to do on April 22nd, which is Earth Day, which happens to be the first day of the New York Conference in April of 2025. So things are moving in that direction when we talk more globally and togetherness. And we need more people doing the great things in geothermal, we need more active voices.

So for my organization, we have these working groups — we call them working groups because nobody wants to be on a committee. But I would encourage people listening to this who are engaged in their local states and communities to step up, volunteer to be on those committees (or working groups), give a couple of hours of their time to help advance the associations and advance the message of geothermal and Ground Source Heat Pumps because I can't do it by myself. My committee and my board can't do it by themselves. They need everybody. We need members. We need people to advance our mission, and this conference is an excellent way to do that, but we can't do this conference without active members, and we can't do this conference without the sponsors that come behind it because it is very expensive to put on. And we're lucky because we get people to come and present, but it's still very expensive at the end of the day. So we're very appreciative of everybody that comes, and we're very appreciative of our sponsors so that we have this opportunity and this platform to talk about all the things that we need to talk about and then implement to advance geothermal and ground sourced heat pumps.

Brock Yordy 

That's perfectly said. We need more volunteers. In 1999, there was a study by the Office of Geothermal Technologies that said by 2010, if we adopt ground source heat pumps, we could be at the levels that we're trying to shoot for now at 2030. And in that study, it says there's 400,000 ground source heat pumps in the United States. 25 years later, we're at 1.8 million. And you look at the significance of that, it is a big step, but compared to air source or other technologies out there — I think Donovan says it best when he says, “It's a firm, reliable technology.” We got to get there. I think you have a great story of some friends that you were trying to sell. I want you to tell them to the audience about how we can advocate better.

Christine Hoffer 

So, you have to remember I'm still not a geothermal expert or a ground source expert. So, I was having dinner and cocktails with a friend and she's like, “Yeah, I'm thinking about something new. I've heard about geothermal. I know you work in the industry, but it's expensive.” And I said, “Well, it's really not.” And I said, “I'm not going to tell you how much it's going to cost you because I can't answer that question. You need to think about the other things that come with geothermal and its longevity versus whatever else that you have. You get heating and cooling, in some aspects, a little bit of dehumidification,” which, in upstate New York, we want a little bit of that.

And we had just gone through this heat wave, which was uncharacteristic for that time of the year in York, so nobody was prepared for it. Everyone was pulling out their sweaters and pulling out your T-shirt at the same time. And we were in a situation where there was a bit of a brownout and the news said, “Please don't have your air conditioner running if you're not home. Don't use this, don't use that. Because there were some brownouts.”

And I said, “The thing about our technology is that we do use electricity, but we're not as hard on the grid as other technologies. And so when you run your air conditioner, or if you happen to have an air source heat pump, it puts a lot of strain on the grid,” which she didn't know what I was talking about. And quite honestly, I really didn't either. But we talk a lot about the impact on the grid, and it's dirty for all the reasons that you just said, Brock. I'll let you talk about that.

And she said, “Well, what's that mean, dirty?” And I just said, “It causes more energy. It uses more fuel elsewhere to create electricity. So, we need to be cognizant of those kinds of things.” And this is a person who turns on her light, pays her electric bill, and knows nothing else. And I'm kind of like that as well. But I do know that if we were to replace all air conditioners and all air source heat pumps with ground source heat pumps, we would be in a better place and we wouldn't necessarily have to add as much to the grid. We just need to be more tidy with the grid. And she goes, “Well, I didn't want to be a dirty girl.” And I was just like, that is so funny. That's such a great statement because she wants to be very conscientious about the environment. She didn't understand that. And that little bit of knowledge that I gave her was like, “Well, I'm going to look more seriously at what this geothermal can mean for me and my family.”

And I think we need to be able to talk to our folks more like that. Again, I wasn't able to provide her with everything that she really needed to know, but at the end of the day, she was a conscientious human being who understood that in order for us not to have this crazy stuff that's happening in our planet right now, we all individually need to take some responsibility for that. And that's ground source heat pumps.

Brock Yordy 

It is. And one of the big pieces to this, even from a 1999 study versus what we saw come out with the NREL and the DoE in December 2023, is that we have $3 trillion worth of electrical infrastructure to build if we stay dirty. And that's the thing, when you look at thermal networks and the opportunities in Framingham right now, and I know Eversource is going to talk about lessons learned and Con Ed, one of the major sponsors is in the middle of this with the Chelsea neighborhood and other pieces, and everybody's going, “Wait a minute, this doesn't make sense. It's unclear.” The clear piece is 15 feet below the ground, it's 50 to 55 degrees depending on where we are in the country. And that's year round. And so, as we see extreme weather events where it is a hundred degrees outside, or we see the polar vortexes, or the nor'easters come through and we drop below zero degrees, we can harness and use what Mother Nature has given us as a constant temperature. We can use that to heat up to our comfortable temperature or rob that cold out. It's so much more elegant than trying to force air from outside combined with a building. And right now, Fall is the perfect point, drillers. As you're across the country, we're seeing 55-degree days and then we're seeing 82-degree days. And it takes a lot for a house to convert and recover to that when we're using air source regardless.

Christine Hoffer 

Yeah, yeah. So, how do we provide that message in a clear, concise voice across all platforms? And so, going back to the ACT group, that IGSHPA group that we're putting together includes toolkits for everybody to be able to extract from those toolkits and be able to talk about the technology to whomever you're speaking to — whether it be an eighth-grader at a Career Jam or an 80-year-old who is skeptical that investment's not going to work because they’re going to be dead in five years. It's more about the same reason that you pay your school taxes: the students you need to support, and the building's not going to go away, and your family is still going to be there. So think about the longevity of not just yourself.

Brock Yordy 

I couldn't agree more. And thank you for joining us today. Any last challenges or words? I would like to say that on top of all of the great collaboration, the NY-Geo Conference has a lot of fun and everybody finds time to laugh and commemorate and celebrate our hard work and take a moment to breathe and be amongst colleagues all working for this goal. And that is just as important as getting to listen to our keynote speakers and be at dinner cheering each other, regardless if that's an iced tea or a good Brooklyn-style craft beer, it's damn fun to be part of that.

Christine Hoffer 

Right? Yeah. And I think that's really important how we come together and share stories. Meeting people that you hear on the Newscast, for example, but that you haven't met before. So you get to meet that person in real life, maybe. I think the message, the challenge that I would have, is to the developer. We need the developers in the room. We need to be able to talk to the developers about why they want to include this technology in the design of their new buildings, why they want to include this technology in the retrofit of their existing buildings — again, New York State has the oldest housing stock in the country. If you're a developer and you're listening to this and you have not yet registered and you're in New York or you can get to New York, Brock, drop my email in there and we'll make sure that you're at our conference.

But I really think that those are the folks that we need to instill the reasons for using our technology. They're the ones that are making change and sort of in charge. And we need them there. We need them to understand why ground source geothermal is the best thing for them as a developer, and this is the best thing for the people that are going to be tenants in their building, and the best thing for our environment. We need them there. We need to talk to them, we need to educate them, and we need to get them to be a part of our mission — and that is to advance geothermal ground source heat pumps in New York state and the world.

Brock Yordy 

Especially with this being the 10- year anniversary. To put that in perspective, nine years ago was the Paris Agreement. So the entire NY-Geo team and board, and all the people that are so passionate, they were months ahead of a global initiative for us to reduce our carbon footprint via ground source geothermal. So it's pretty cool, and you need to be there to be around these visionaries and share your vision as well.

Christine Hoffer 

I agree.

Brock Yordy 

Thank you, Christine. It's been fun, as always. And we will cheers that iced tea or other beverage like we have at the other conferences, and I challenge everybody to come out and just celebrate how great this industry and conference is. 

Christine Hoffer 

Yeah. Thanks Brock. Thanks for having us. Thanks for being the champion that you are. You and your team are amazing. Our industry is very lucky to have you as a champion.

Brock Yordy 

We're lucky to have New York blazing the way for the country, from the government to NYSERDA to the utilities. NY-Geo has been in the background this entire time, poking, prodding, pushing, promoting — being part of these skylines and buildings. It's the history. 

Christine Hoffer 

Yeah, it is. And what's really interesting is that the board, they all kind of do things a little bit differently within the geothermal world, and I think that's also very important. The diversity of projects and the diversity of our board is terrific. And again, they're the ones that are making hay. (Is that the right saying? Whatever that saying is.) They're the ones that are boots-on-the-ground and we just need more of them. We need more people across everything — not just New York, everything — engaged in what we're doing, asking questions, learning, becoming trained, getting that certification, all of that.

Brock Yordy 

Awesome. Thank you so much for your time today.

Christine Hoffer 

Alright, thanks a lot Brock.

Brock Yordy 

Thank you for joining us for episode 132 of The Driller Newscast. Stay tuned because we will be dropping conference recaps and wrap-up of discussions and all the great things that have happened here in Brooklyn. And of course, we have COP 29 happening in just 20 days. That's big. Check out thedriller.com for all the latest content on everything — drilling, clean water, clean air, clean energy, infrastructure, environmental, geotechnical. We have lots to share. Thanks.