How the Smart Energy Can Contribute towards Achieving the Sustainable Development Goal 7

Against the backdrop of the digital technology revolution, smart energy offers significant opportunities to achieve the Energy Sustainable Development Goals (SDG7). However, the theoretical and empirical exploration of how smart energy can achieve SDG7 remains incomplete. This study investigates deeply into the influence and mechanism of smart energy on SDG7. Utilizing China’s smart energy pilot policy, it adopts the synthetic difference-in-difference method and China’s provincial data to estimate the influence of smart energy on SDG7. The results show the following: (1) Smart energy is beneficial to achieving SDG7, and smart energy promotes the realization of SDG7-1 by enhancing energy service accessibility, affordability, and reliability; SDG7-2 by enhancing the renewable energy absorption level and consumption ratio; and SDG7-3 by enabling real-time monitoring, accurate matching, and highly intelligent coordination to improve energy efficiency. (2) Among the quantitative findings, smart energy has notable implications for the SDG7, SDG7-1, and SDG7-3 indexes but has a more limited influence on the SDG7-2 index. (3) The single pilot tests indicate certain differences in effects due to the project scale and program design. Finally, this study provides a theoretical basis and empirical evidence for the region to search for a digital approach to realize SDG7 and smart energy construction planning.