Digital Technology and Energy System Resilience: Transmission Mechanisms and Threshold Effects—Evidence from China’s Provincial Panel Data

Energy system resilience is essential for maintaining energy security and system stability under growing global uncertainty. Based on panel data for 30 Chinese provinces over the period 2012–2023, this paper investigates the relationship between digital technology and energy system resilience. Digital technology and energy system resilience are measured with entropy-weighted composite indices, and the empirical tests are conducted using a two-way fixed-effects model, mediation-effect models, and a panel threshold model. The results show that digital technology significantly improves energy system resilience, and this finding remains stable after endogeneity treatment and several robustness checks. The mechanism analysis further shows that industrial structure upgrading, digital industrial agglomeration, and green innovation serve as important channels linking digital technology to energy system resilience. The threshold results further show that the effect of digital technology is stage-dependent. Digital technology has a positive effect in all three stages, with the strongest effect occurring in the medium digital development stage, followed by slower marginal improvement in the high digital development stage. The heterogeneity results show that the effect is more pronounced in provinces with high resource dependence and in the central and western regions. By contrast, the eastern region presents a weaker marginal effect, while the northeastern region faces stronger constraints in transforming digital technology into resilience improvement. These findings suggest that digital technology is an important driver of energy system resilience and can support a more stable and sustainable energy transition, although its effect varies across development stages and regional conditions.