As an important driving force for energy efficiency, the digital economy plays an irreplaceable role in achieving the goal of energy conservation. Entrepreneurship, as an endogenous force driving economic growth, also has an important impact on energy efficiency. Therefore, this paper incorporates entrepreneurship into the analysis framework of industrial development, and discusses the main paths and theoretical mechanisms of digital economy affecting energy efficiency from the two dimensions of entrepreneurship's innovation spirit and entrepreneurial spirit. The current work has yielded the following results: (1) The digital economy has significantly improved energy efficiency, and after a series of robust tests, this conclusion is reliable. (2) The nonlinear regression results show that with the improvement of economic development level, the role of digital economy in promoting energy efficiency gradually increases. 3) The heterogeneity test found that the digital economy had a significant role in promoting energy efficiency in the sample of resource-based cities and central region, but this effect was not significant in the samples of eastern and western regions and non-resource-based cities. (4) Mechanism testing shows that entrepreneurship's innovation spirit is an important mechanism for promoting energy efficiency in the digital economy, while entrepreneurial spirit is not. (5) From the convergence model test, it can be seen that the regional convergence of energy efficiency objectively exists, and the digital economy has become a booster to promote its regional convergence. •The digital economy has significantly improved energy efficiency.•The effects of entrepreneurship's innovation spirit are crucial channels.•The regional convergence of energy efficiency objectively exists.