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In the context of the increasing instability and uncertainty of the world economy, China’s energy security is threatened. It is important to study how to build the energy “internal circulation” for China’s sustainable development. This paper measures the level of interprovincial energy trade and digital economy development in China through the gravity model estimation method and the entropy value method and examines the impact and mechanism of action of the digital economy on energy circulation. The findings are as follows: (1) Accelerating the development of the digital economy can significantly improve the level of energy “internal circulation” in China, which remains robust after endogeneity treatment and a series of robustness tests. (2) Digital economy has promoted the development of energy “internal circulation” from the production, distribution, exchange, and consumption of energy. (3) The higher the level of digital economy development, the more energy-rich regions and the central regions with a high degree of coupling and coordination between digital and energy systems, the more the digital economy contributes to the energy “internal circulation”. Therefore, it is proposed to accelerate the development of the digital economy, to pay attention to the in-depth integration of digital and energy, and to focus on the coordinated development of regions as effective ways to jointly promote the energy “internal circulation”.

The current global energy trade network is changing dramatically: the essence of the change is digitalization and renewable energy, and the study of the impact of the digital economy on the changing status of a country’s energy trade network is of great practical significance for each country to ensure energy security. We find that: the digital economy has a direct impact on a country’s climbing position in the fossil energy trade network and the renewable energy trade network. The high technology attributes of the digital economy lead to the rise of energy trading networks in energy-exporting countries by affecting their energy production efficiency and product competitiveness; the high energy-consuming attributes of the digital economy have an indirect effect by affecting the energy demand of energy-importing countries. The digital economy has a positive and increasing marginal nonlinear effect on the change in the status of renewable energy trade networks, and a positive but decreasing marginal nonlinear effect on the climbing status of fossil energy trade networks. This paper confirms the impact of the digital economy on a country’s changing position in the global energy trade network and provides policy insights for each country to ensure energy security.