In the digital era, enterprises need to explore the green development path to achieve sustainable development. Whether the digital economy can promote enterprises’ green innovation has thus become an important issue. Based on the panel data of heavy-polluting enterprises in 352 cities in China from 2015 to 2019, this article analyzes the impact of the digital economy on enterprises’ green innovation and yields three main findings: A positive relationship between the digital economy and heavy-polluting enterprises’ green innovation is confirmed and accompanied by the lag effect. Mechanism analysis indicates that absorption capacity plays an important mediating role in this process. Further, the hypothesis concerning the U-shaped relationship is proved empirically, indicating that heavy-polluting enterprises’ green innovation can be improved under the digital economy shocks but with a specific level context. This article suggests that the government should pay attention to the digital economy development, and encourage enterprises to increase investment in scientific research. This research provides empirical evidence for the effectiveness of applying the digital economy in advancing green innovation in China’s heavy-polluting enterprises.

In the context of promoting sustainable development and innovative growth, few studies have examined the signaling role of digital policy texts and its effects on enterprise innovation. Focused on the pilot project of China’s National Big Data Comprehensive Pilot Zone (NBCPZ), this article applies the modified PMC index model to measure the quality of the 81 digital policies issued by the NBCPZ from 2016 to 2022 and uses a regression model to assess the impact of the digital policies’ quality on the enterprise innovation levels. The results show that the quality of digital policies released by NBCPZ in China shows temporal fluctuation and regional heterogeneity. High-quality digital policies positively promote enterprise innovation, and this relationship exhibits heterogeneity based on enterprise and industry characteristics. High-quality digital policies can enhance enterprises’ innovation level by optimizing the regional data innovation environment and enhancing the willingness of enterprises to innovate with data. These findings reveal the potential effects of digital policy in fostering sustainable enterprise practices and driving enterprise innovation capabilities.

In the context of global environmental governance, a reduction in carbon emissions (CE) is critical for sustainable development. This article delves into the correlation between China's dual pilot policy (DPP), comprising the broadband China city pilot (BCCP) and low-carbon city pilot (LCCP), and CE using panel data for 281 Chinese cities from 2003 to 2020 and a staggered difference-in-differences approach. Our results demonstrate that the DPP contributes to reducing CE. In this regard, we find that DPP exerts a more significant negative effect on CE when the LCCP precedes the BCCP, compared to the BCCP preceding the LCCP. Heterogeneity analysis shows that urban location and resource utilization patterns influence DPP's impact on CE reduction. Moreover, green technology innovation and industrial agglomeration account for the relationship between DPP and CE. The DPP additionally exhibits positive economic performance, benefiting urban sustainability. Taken together, these findings reveal how the DPP negatively affects CE, providing key evidence for regional green economy advancement.

Improving the Yangtze River Economic Belt's industrial energy efficiency is not only an important measure to alleviate China's energy shortages but also a drive to promote green economic development. The Super-EBM model, Malmquist productivity index, exploratory spatial data analysis, and Spatial Dubin model are used in this article to investigate the spatial-temporal dynamic development characteristics and influencing factors of industrial energy efficiency in 108 cities of the Yangtze River Economic Belt from 2011 to 2020. The findings demonstrate that the industrial energy efficiency of the Yangtze River Economic Belt and its three urban agglomerations went through three stages, including the “oscillation period,” “stability period,” and “enhancement period,” and decreases from east to west in the spatial dimension. The Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration has the highest industrial energy efficiency, followed by the Middle-reach Yangtze River urban agglomeration, and the Chengdu-Chongqing urban agglomeration is the lowest. Further, this article identifies seven influencing factors including government intervention, industrial structure, degree of openness, R&D investment, urbanization, economic development, and environmental regulation. This article provides suggestions for industrial energy efficiency improvement.