Public participation in energy saving retrofitting of residential buildings in China Wenling Liu a,b , Jinyun Zhang a,b , Bettina Bluemling b,c , Arthur P.J. Mol b , Can Wang a,⇑ a State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control (SKLESPC), School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China b Environmental Policy Group, Wageningen University, The Netherlands c Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies (IAMO), Halle, Germany highlights  We compare public participation in three early cases of residential retrofitting in Beijing.  Residents’ involvement in pre-retrofit activities as well as in the choice and use of technologies varied.  More involvement of residents during retrofitting improves energy saving performance.  Taking into account motives and energy use practices of residents improves energy saving through retrofitting. article info Article history: Received 21 September 2014 Received in revised form 26 February 2015 Accepted 28 February 2015 Keywords: Residential building retrofit Public participation Energy saving performance Energy technology Behavior abstract Retrofitting existing residential buildings has been claimed as one crucial way to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions within the Chinese residential sector. In China’s govern- ment-dominated retrofitting projects, the participation of residents is often neglected. The objective of this paper is to assess the influence level of public participation (before, during and after retrofit) on energy saving by comparing three Beijing neighborhoods with different retrofitting models: a central government-led model, a local government-led model, and an old neighborhood retrofit model. In the three cases data were collected through interviews with neighborhood workers and residents. The results show that residents’ involvement in pre-retrofit activities, in technology selection and in the use of tech- nology differs greatly among the three cases. This study concludes that in order to improve the effective- ness of energy saving interventions, the motives, intentions and living habits of residents need to be given more consideration when designing and implementing retrofitting. By highlighting the importance of public participation this paper contributes to energy saving policy development in China. Ó 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd. 1. Introduction Parallel to rapid economic growth and an increase in living standards, energy use in China has increased steadily from 0.59 bil- lion tons of standard coal equivalents in 1980 to 2.92 billion tons in 2009, an average annual increase of 5.7% [1]. Building energy con- sumption accounted for 27.5% of the total final energy consump- tion in 2011 [2]. Yao et al. [3] estimated that this ratio will increase to 35% in 2020. The Building Sector is and will continue to be a major energy end-user in the years ahead [4]. Two factors contribute to the large amount of energy use in buildings: large building area and low energy efficiency in buildings (particularly, residential buildings). The majority of residential buildings in urban China – and particularly those built before 2000 – are low- energy-efficient buildings [5], indicating ample room for energy savings initiatives. In northern China, the heat loss from external walls is three to five times higher and from windows two times higher than that of similar buildings in other northern hemisphere countries [6]. Energy use practices in China also demonstrate con- siderable inefficiencies. An empirical study has shown that heat loss due to the opening of windows, a common form of wasting energy, was responsible for 25.8% of the total residential heat sup- ply in China [7]. The total gross floor area in China is 43 billion m 2 , and it is still increasing rapidly. Of the existing residential building floor area of 5.45 billion m 2 in northern China, 4.16 billion m 2 was energy inefficient, and 3.56 billion m 2 used low energy efficient district http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2015.02.090 0306-2619/Ó 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd. ⇑ Corresponding author at: Room 1004, Sino-Italian Tsinghua Ecological and Energy Efficient Building, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China. Tel.: +86 62794115. E-mail address: canwang@tsinghua.edu.cn (C. Wang). Applied Energy 147 (2015) 287–296 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Applied Energy journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apenergy