Abstract While the problems of energy supply-demand security and climate change are being perceived as increasingly urgent, it is important to study embodied energy flows, particularly a large and fast growing developing country like China. To evaluate the energy flows between producer and consumer regions, energy embodied in bilateral trade (EEBT) approach has been adopted to locate the destination of energy bi-directionally. However, in addition to the flow of resources, the topological structure and impact of underlying components are also important for policy making from system science perspective. This study constructs a hybrid regional network model to track multilayer energy flows by integrating EEBT approach and social network analysis (SNA). In particular, the embodied coal, crude oil, natural gas and non-fossil fuels associated with China’s 30 provinces/municipalities are quantified at the regional level. By joint analysis of the network-oriented metrics, the hybrid network model elicits the possibility of understanding the dominant regions for different energy flows and the potential impacts of region-specific policy interventions. We explain how unequal distribution of energy resources, economic mechanism, cross-regional industrial transfer and infrastructure construction affect China’s regional energy embodiments as well as clustering features. Other findings and some recommendations are also presented.