Digitization and industrial low-carbon energy transition in China

The transition to low-carbon energy systems is essential for mitigating global warming. Concurrently, the increasing integration of digitalization within industries presents a promising pathway to align economic growth with environmental sustainability. Despite its significance, the impact of the integration of digitalization and industry on the industrial energy transition remains underexplored in existing research. This study introduces an innovative framework based on an input-output model to quantify the integration of digitalization and industry and assess its impact on the low-carbon energy transition across China's 30 provincial regions from 2010 to 2021. Empirical findings indicate that integrating digitalization and industries significantly facilitates the low-carbon energy transition, exhibiting considerable variations among different digitalization sectors. Specifically, the distribution sector exerts a marginally greater influence on energy transition compared to the production and exchange sectors. Additionally, industrial digitalization has a more pronounced effect on energy transition than digital industrialization. Mechanism analysis further identifies two critical pathways through which the integration of digitalization and industry drives energy transition: enhancing the supply capacity of clean energy and raising demand for clean energy. These results highlight the transformative potential of integrating digitalization with industry in achieving clean energy transitions and fostering sustainable economic growth.