In this paper, we construct and analyze an energy stable scheme by combining the latest developed scalar auxiliary variable (SAV) approach and linear finite element method (FEM) for phase field crystal (PFC) model, and show rigorously that the scheme is first-order in time and second-order in space for the L 2 and H -1 gradient flow equations. To reduce efficiently computational cost and capture accurately the phase interface, we give a simple adaptive strategy, equipped with a posteriori gradient estimator, i.e. L 2 norm of the recovered gradient. Extensive numerical experiments are presented to verify our theoretical results and to demonstrate the effectiveness and accuracy of our proposed method.