Does smart manufacturing improve energy efficiency in manufacturing enterprises? Empirical evidence from China's A-share listed manufacturing firms.

Improving energy-use efficiency is essential for industrial green transformation and China's carbon-peaking and carbon-neutrality goals. Using panel data on Chinese A-share-listed manufacturing firms from 2011 to 2024, this study treats the national smart manufacturing pilot demonstration program as a quasi-natural experiment and applies a staggered difference-in-differences model and mechanism analysis to examine the effect of smart manufacturing on firm energy-use efficiency. The results show that smart manufacturing significantly improves energy-use efficiency, and this finding remains robust to alternative specifications, endogeneity checks, and heterogeneity-robust DID estimators. Mechanism estimates are consistent with three theoretically specified channels-digital empowerment, green innovation, and resource-allocation optimization. The effect is more pronounced among state-owned enterprises, firms with high R&D intensity, and firms in non-heavily polluting industries. These findings provide firm-level evidence on the energy-efficiency benefits of smart manufacturing and offer policy implications for energy-efficient industrial upgrading and a potential low-carbon transition.