Abstract China is currently the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide (CO2). Vigorously developing new energy sources has become an important way to reduce CO2 emissions. Therefore, more and more scholars have studied effective ways to promote the development of new energy industry. However, most of the existing research use single-equation linear models or static models to study the driving forces of the new energy industry. This not only ignores the large number of dynamic relationships between economic variables, but also produces endogeneity problems. In order to overcome the shortcomings of existing research, this paper uses vector autoregressive model to study the new energy industry. The results show that energy consumption structure has a positive effect on the new energy industry in the short run, but the effect is limited in the long run. The impact of the agriculture industry is gradually narrowing over time due to the gradual reduction of crop acreage. However, the influence of economic growth is positive both in the short and long run. This is due to the gradual optimization of industrial structure. Technological progress produces a similar impact, owing to continued investment in research and development funding as well as research and development personnel.