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As energy saving and emission reduction become a global action, the disparity in energy intensity between different regions is a new rising problem that stems a country's or region's energy-saving potential. Here we collect China's provincial panel data (1995–2017) of primary and final energy consumption to evaluate China's unequal and polarized regional pattern in energy intensity, decompose the inequality index into contributing components, and investigate possible driving factors behind the unequal pattern both regionally and structurally, for the first time. The results show that China's interprovince disparities in energy intensity increase and are exacerbated by the enlarging disparities in energy intensity between the least developed and most developed regions of China. The causes for this phenomenon are as follows: (i) rather loose regulatory measures on mitigating coal consumption; (ii) inferior energy processing technology in areas specializing in energy-intensive industries; (iii) increasing interregional energy fluxes embodied in trade; and (iv) separate jurisdictions at provincial administrative levels. These factors can synthetically result in unintended spillover to areas with inferior green technologies, suggesting an increasingly uneven distribution of energy-intensive and carbon-intensive industries and usage of clean energy. The results reveal the necessities of regional coordination and cooperation to achieve a green economy. ©2020. The Authors. Earth's Future published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Geophysical Union