After Yukon Energy's office building burned down last year, the company knew that it wanted to build an energy efficient structure for its new headquarters. Yukon Energy was ready to pay more upfront, if necessary, for an extremely efficient building that would cost less to run.

But then the utility company discovered the C-2000 program, and found that you don't always have to pay more to get good results. Some C-2000 buildings have been so successful that they have surprised even the people who started this federal program.

C-2000 sets exacting performance standards for commercial buildings. It is referred to as the commercial equivalent of the R-2000 program, the residential energy efficiency program. But the criteria for C-2000 are much more wide-ranging.

As well as using about 50% less energy than conventional office buildings, C-2000 buildings must also minimize their impact on the environment and be comfortable, healthy places in which to work. When completed, the new YEC building will be one of about six buildings in Canada to meet C-2000 standards.

The federal government assumed that such innovative buildings would be expensive to build, and that exotic leading-edge technologies would be needed to meet the high performance standards. As an incentive, grants were offered to cover the higher design costs for C-2000 buildings.

But some of these assumptions were proven wrong after a few C-2000 buildings were built. Some buildings met the performance standards using relatively conventional technologies. These "high-performance" buildings were also built for about the same price as conventional structures.

But the most surprising finding has been the importance of the planning process. The difference between success and failure depends upon the design team, and how well it works together, rather than state-of-the-art technology.

In the C-2000 process, an energy consultant is on the design team as well as architects and engineers. For the YEC building, Gord Schymko, the energy consultant, was the only non-Yukoner on the team.

The consultant's role is to help the team work together to achieve the performance standards from the very beginning, instead of relying on fixing problems when they arise later. The consultant can also point out areas in which more a more innov ative design can mean that conventional standards can be lowered.

For example, in the YEC building, a great deal of attention was paid to natural lighting. The building is built like a boomerang, with its two wings facing south. The relatively narrow wings allow natural light to penetrate as far as possible into the building.

The triple pane windows, larger and more numerous than one normally sees in the north, are filled with a gas that filters out certain light rays. The windows will lose more heat than they will gain, but the savings on lighting costs should more than offset the extra heating costs.

A simple device called a sunshade will keep down the amount of glare inside the building. This horizontal shelf, installed about two-thirds of the way up the window, will also produce more diffuse natural light inside the building.

When the sun is high, most of the light will bounce off the top of the sunshade and be directed through the window to the ceiling of the room, producing a more diffuse natural light.

The high-tech lighting fixtures also throw light up to the ceiling. They are controlled by photo sensors that automatically turn the lights off when there is sufficient illumination inside the room.

For heating, cooling and ventilation, the new building will use a decentralized system. When air first enters the building it will be heated to about 15 degrees Celsius, and then distributed to 26 different units around the building.

Each unit has its own thermostat. The big payoff for this approach will be in the fall and summer when it is harder to regulate the temperature in a large building. For air-conditioning, cold groundwater will be pumped from a small well into the air-conditioning coils. After cooling the air in the coils, the water will run back through gravel beds and into the water table.

A dual boiler system means that either fuel oil or electricity can be used to run the building's energy plant. When water flows from Marsh Lake are high, the surplus electricity can be used to run the electric boiler. A system for piping hot water from the diesel plant to supplemental boilers in the new building will be finished in the future.

Most of these technologies are not new. Using groundwater for air-conditioning is common on the Prairies. The technology for the heating, cooling and ventilation system has been around for 60 years, but engineers were reluctant to use it until recently because of concerns about maintenance costs.

Not every building designed to meet the C-2000 standards has met its goal, but energy simulations show that the YEC building should be a success story. Gord Schymko says this building is an example of a planning process that worked.

"When buildings have not met the standards, it's usually because the process has failed. People tend to fall back into old patterns. They design the building and then put band-aids on the problems. There has to be a fundamental fork in the road where you choose to go on the path of synergy and integration," he says.

Yukon contractors built the two million-dollar building, so now there is made-in-the Yukon expertise for more high performance buildings in the territory.

For more information, contact the Yukon Energy Company at 667-8382.