The Impact of the Integrated Development of AI and Energy Industry on Regional Energy Industry: A Case of China

With the advent of the Energy 4.0 era, the adoption of “Internet + artificial intelligence” systems will enable the transformation and upgrading of the traditional energy industry. This will alleviate the energy and environmental problems that China is currently facing. The integrated development of artificial intelligence and the energy industry has become inevitable in the development of future energy systems. This study applied a comprehensive evaluation index to the energy industry to calculate the comprehensive development index of the energy industry in 30 provinces of China from 2000 to 2017. Then, taking Guangdong and Jiangsu as examples, the synthetic control method was used to explore the direction and intensity of the integrated development of artificial intelligence and the energy industry on the comprehensive development level of the local energy industry. The results showed that when artificial intelligence (AI) and the energy industry achieved a stable coupled development without the need to move to the coordination stage, the coupling effect promoted the development of the regional energy industry, and the annual growth rate of the comprehensive development index was above 20%. This coupling effect passed the placebo test and ranking test and was significant at the 10% level, indicating the robustness and validity of the experimental results, which strongly confirmed the great potential of AI in re-empowering traditional industries from the data perspective. Based on the findings, corresponding policy recommendations were proposed on how to promote the development of inter-regional AI, how the government, enterprises, and universities could cooperate to promote the coordinated development of AI and energy, and how to guide the integration process of regional AI and energy industries according to local conditions, in order to maximize the technological dividend of AI and help the construction of smart energy in China.