Citywide echoes of the energy revolution: How new energy policies enhance urban green development resilience?

In the face of mounting global climate change challenges, integrating urban resilience with green development has become a crucial pathway to achieving sustainable development. This study constructs an indicator system for urban green development resilience (UGDR) based on panel data from 262 prefecture-level cities in China from 2008 to 2022, and applies the VHSD-EM model for comprehensive measurement. By further employing a difference-in-differences model combined with machine learning methods, the study systematically evaluates the impact and underlying mechanisms of the New Energy Demonstration Area (NEDA) policy. The results reveal that the NEDA policy significantly enhances UGDR. In the mechanism analysis, this paper innovatively incorporates the perspective of “coopetition relationship” into the institutional and technological framework of ecological modernization theory, enriching the theoretical understanding of policy effects. Heterogeneity analysis further shows that NEDA exerts stronger effects in old industrial base cities and in economically developed and developing regions. This research provides both theoretical and practical insights for the optimization and expansion of renewable energy policies, emphasizing the importance of institutional reform, technological innovation, and intercity coopetition in improving energy efficiency and environmental governance, and ultimately advancing green, low-carbon transformation and the realization of sustainable development goals.