Does network infrastructure construction reduce energy intensity? Based on the “Broadband China” strategy

As one of the new economic forms, the digital economy has penetrated into all sub-sectors of the economy becoming a new engine for economic growth. Network infrastructure is the pillar and core driver for the development of the digital economy, getting increasingly evident and important. Meanwhile, green development has become a time trend for the more and more serious global climate problems. Thereinto, reducing energy intensity is an important starting point for achieving green development. The impact of network infrastructure on energy intensity should not be ignored. This article uses the “Broadband China” demonstration cities as a quasi-natural experiment to reflect the improvement of network construction and build a time-varying difference-in-differences (time-varying DID) model to explore the impact of network construction on Chinese prefecture-level energy intensity. The results show that: (1) The construction of network infrastructure can significantly reduce prefecture-level energy intensity, and this conclusion still holds after a series of robustness tests. (2) Network infrastructure construction will reduce prefecture-level energy intensity through the mediating effect of energy efficiency, market environment, and innovation. (3) The effect will be more obvious in Northeast China, with huge scale, high levels of human capital, perfect broadband user access, complex industrial structures and better financial development levels. We hope this research provides empirical evidence for improving the construction of network facilities and realizing the “Two-Wheel Drive” of digitizing and greening.