Effectiveness and Adaptability of Energy Retrofit Measures in Chinese Public Buildings: A Large-Scale Empirical Analysis

Unofficial AI-generated summary based on the public title and abstract. Not an official translation.

🔬研究者:Provides robust empirical evidence on retrofit effectiveness across climates and building types, useful for benchmarking and model validation.

🏢実務担当者:Offers data-driven guidance for prioritizing retrofit measures in public buildings, aiding investment decisions and energy management.

🏛政策担当者:Informs building energy efficiency policies and incentive programs by identifying which measures are most effective in different contexts.

Energy efficiency retrofits are widely promoted for public buildings, yet evidence from large-scale real-world projects remains limited compared with simulation-based assessments. This study leverages measured pre- and post-retrofit operational data from 530 public building retrofit projects across 11 provinces/municipalities in China to quantify realized energy-saving performance and screening-level cost-effectiveness across building types and climate zones. Wilcoxon and Kruskal–Wallis tests were employed to ensure statistical rigor. Retrofit measures were grouped into seven categories (e.g., HVAC, lighting, envelope, monitoring/management), and a median-based four-quadrant framework was employed to characterize investment–savings profiles by climate zone and building function. Across the full sample, mean energy use intensity decreased by 19.1%, with 99.2% of projects achieving positive savings. Savings varied markedly by building type: commercial and hotels achieved the highest savings intensities (26.5–28.0 kWh/(m2·a)), while education and cultural buildings generally showed lower gains, with some projects having < 10 kWh/(m2·a). Technology performance exhibited distinct climate and building suitability. Envelope retrofits were most effective in the Cold and Hot Summer–Cold Winter zones (13.30–22.06 kWh/(m2·a)) but yielded limited benefits in the Hot Summer–Warm Winter zone (~1.73 kWh/(m2·a)). HVAC and lighting upgrades delivered comparatively stable savings across climates and building types and dominated retrofit portfolios. Based on these findings, we propose a tiered strategy: prioritizing HVAC and envelope upgrades for high-load sectors while focusing on low-cost optimizations for educational facilities to mitigate investment risks. The findings provide large-scale empirical evidence to support climate- and building-specific retrofit prioritization and investment decision-making under real-world operating conditions.

• openalex https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings16101877first seen 2026-05-17 07:19:47 · last seen 2026-06-16 04:53:01