In this article, the energy saving potential of passive design for shopping centers in the early design stages is quantitatively evaluated through standardized modeling and simulation. With cold regions taken as an example, three common standard geometric and operating parameters models of shopping centers with typical climatic characteristics were extracted. Grasshopper and EnergyPlus were chosen as the standard parametric modeling software and the energy simulation software respectively. From three aspects--- the site, building and envelope, 24 passive design parameters that affect the energy-saving potential of shopping centers were summarized. By simulation, the energy saving potential and the ranking of the 24 passive design parameters in three standard models were obtained. The result shows that the entrance wind speed, corridor space, skylight area and roof U-value are four important design parameters that affect the energy saving potential of shopping centers in cold regions, which provides designers with quantitative guidance for design optimization in the early design stages.