Digital Armor: How Digital Transformation Enhances the Resilience of Renewable Energy Enterprises

Enhancing the resilience of renewable energy enterprises is crucial for advancing the energy revolution and building a clean, low-carbon, safe, and efficient energy system. Against the background of an accelerating energy transition and rising external uncertainty, renewable energy enterprises face multiple challenges, including technological iteration, policy adjustments, and market fluctuations. Thus, enhancing enterprise resilience through digital transformation has become a key issue for promoting high-quality development in the energy industry. Using a sample of Chinese A-share listed renewable energy companies covering the period 2014–2024, this study empirically examines the impact of digital transformation on the resilience of these enterprises and the underlying mechanisms. The results show that digital transformation can significantly enhance enterprise resilience, a finding that remains robust after a series of robustness tests. Mechanism analysis indicates that digital transformation enhances resilience mainly by alleviating financing constraints, optimizing resource allocation, and improving innovation quality. Heterogeneity analysis further reveals that the resilience-enhancing effect of digital transformation varies across enterprises of different sizes and life-cycle stages. This paper provides empirical evidence that renewable energy enterprises can rely on digital technologies to strengthen their risk resilience and improve their sustainable development.