China’s electricity market reform has unfolded over several decades within a complex multi-level governance system involving both central and provincial governments. Although prior studies recognize that central–local interactions shape the direction and pace of reform, systematic evidence is limited on whether policy priorities have evolved coherently or diverged across time and regions. To address this gap, we apply the Structural Topic Model (STM) to 13,234 policy documents issued between 1985 and 2023 to identify three core reform agendas and quantify the temporal and spatial evolution of policy attention. Results show that (1) price marketization (P) consistently dominates the central government’s reform agenda, reflecting a long-standing emphasis on market efficiency and institutional restructuring; (2) provincial governments allocate relatively more attention to low-carbon transition (L), often alongside reduced emphasis on price marketization (P), indicating a structured reweighting of priorities across governance levels; (3) comparisons across eight major regulatory zones reveal pronounced spatial heterogeneity: resource-dependent regions emphasize market and pricing reform, renewable-rich areas prioritize low-carbon development, and economically advanced coastal regions focus on service improvement and regulatory modernization. These findings provide systematic empirical evidence that policy coherence in China’s multi-level governance system is dynamic rather than static. Central–local divergence is best interpreted not as policy noncompliance but as structured regional differentiation and adaptive governance in reform implementation.

Quantitative analysis of the impact of digitalization on the energy, environment and economic comprehensive benefits of the energy Internet has important theoretical and practical value. Based on the perspective of industrial chain, this paper adopted the method of System Dynamics theory to describe the key role of digital technology investment in upstream energy production, midstream energy transmission and downstream energy consumption of the energy Internet industry. It identified digital technology investment and other key factors that affect the efficiency of the Energy Internet, clarified their feedback relationships. On this basis, it built a system dynamic model including energy producers, energy service provider and the end user subsystems to quantitatively simulate the comprehensive impacts of the Energy Internet industry under the change of the proportion of different types of digital technology investment. The simulation results show that digital technology investment plays a key role in improving the comprehensive benefits of the energy Internet; Under the scenario of high proportion of digital technology investment, it is estimated that by 2025, digital investment of energy internet will provide nearly 0.72 million jobs for Chinese society every year, and the installed capacity of clean energy power generation will increase to 1.76 billion kilowatts, which can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 5.7 billion tons in total. Increasing the proportion of digital technology investment can significantly improve the comprehensive benefits of the energy Internet and strongly support the development goals of China's 14th Five Year Plan.