Abstract
This study investigates the impact of the development of the digital economy (DE) on coal consumption and the underlying mechanisms using Chinese provincial data over the period 2011-2022. The results demonstrate that DE development is correlated with reduced coal consumption. When the DE development increases by one standard deviation, the reduction in coal consumption is 0.1938. The underlying mechanism is attributed to the DE facilitating the financial technology development and technological innovation's quality, which are conducive to reducing coal consumption.