A path towards China's energy justice: How does digital technology innovation bring about a just revolution?

Although digital technology innovation (DTI) is crucial for facilitating the switch to green energy, it has also caused energy justice issues. Therefore, it is of great significance to study the impact of DTI on energy justice. This study innovatively calculates the DTI and energy justice indexes of 30 Chinese provinces from 2006 to 2019 and explores the influence of DTI on energy justice with the system-generalized method of moments (SYS-GMM). We further discuss the mediating role of energy structure and green total factor productivity (GTFP), as well as the moderating role of R&D intensity. The main results show that: (1) DTI can significantly promote energy justice. (2) DTI indirectly enhances energy justice by upgrading the energy structure and increasing GTFP. In addition, R&D intensity is a positive mediator between DTI and energy justice. (3) Security, Sensor, and device network, and Cognition and meaning understanding technologies are the leading contributors to achieving energy justice. This study provides insights for policymakers to promote just energy transition in terms of DTI.