Strong growth in global electricity demand and the increase of urbanization rate are putting enormous pressure on urban energy systems. How to balance the supply and demand of energy, improve energy efficiency and achieve sustainable urban development become an urgent topic. Novel technologies such as the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and blockchain are powerful tools to help us to realize a sustainable and green energy transition.

To meet the high energy demand of cities, developed countries or regions who put big effort on energy transition, such as Germany and Nordic countries,  continue to promote the construction of distributed renewable power system, invest heavily in building energy management field, and gradually materialize an open distributed power trading system. Digital technologies such as smart energy management system, can effectively supervise the power system and ensure a stable operation of grid when many power prosumers participate in the power exchange and trading.

China is the world's largest energy consumer and its electricity demand is continuously rising with the growth rate of 4.5% in 2019, of which the electricity consumption of urban and rural residents increased by 5.7%. The cities with large population are facing greater energy pressure. In order to ease such pressure, improve energy efficiency and promote sustainable development, China has introduced policies to encourage the development of distributed power generation facilities and electricity trading. In addition to promoting distributed power generation to reduce transmission losses, the efficient energy management on the user side also plays a positive role in the urban energy systems transition.

Although China has issued some policies to promote the smart energy management systems implementation, such as subsidies for intelligent retrofitting of building in Beijing, Shanghai, etc. The energy technology innovation and application still require to be accelerated and guided by more detailed policies. According to the research of industries and policies in domestic and international market, the core policy suggestions are proposed as following:

· Accelerating the construction of distributed power generation systems in large and medium-sized cities.

· Promoting the launch of pilot distributed power trading projects. Refining the trading mechanism and regulations.

· Defining the energy consumption policies for mega buildings and incentivizing the construction or retrofitting of smart buildings.

· Encouraging the development of digital technologies, facilitating the implementation of such technologies in building or energy projects.

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