In October 2021, the Center for Global Sustainability at University of Maryland completed this policy research on building energy efficiency retrofits, with support from Energy Foundation China.

The report summarizes the experiences from the United States Department of Energy’s Federal Energy Management Program and the New York State Energy Development Agency’s Commercial and Industrial Carbon Challenge, two innovative retrofitting programs that have significantly contributed to market transformation in hard-to-reach building sectors. It provides a detailed description of how policy and institutional arrangements and business models can be used to promote energy saving retrofits of public buildings. The case studies in this report offer two feasible models for motivating the private sector to participate in public building retrofits and provide valuable references for China in addressing key issues in public building energy saving retrofits.