The digital economy drives China’s high-quality economic growth and reduces carbon emissions. Urban carbon emissions reduction is crucial to China’s “dual carbon” development goal and climate change adaptation. Spatial econometric modeling, standard deviation ellipse analysis, kernel density estimation, the Moran index, and Moran’s index are used to study the effects of the digital economy on provincial carbon emissions in 30 Chinese provinces from 2012 to 2021. The study found that: (1) The digital economy has shown a rising trend over time, with the spatial distribution of “eastcenter- west” decreasing in space. Carbon emissions, on the other hand, show a decreasing trend, with a spatial distribution characterized by a high north and a low south. (2) As measured by the standard deviation ellipse model, the digital economy and carbon emissions have decreasing ellipse areas, with the former’s centers of gravity moving northward and the latter’s southward, indicating that their spatial agglomeration characteristics are growing. (3) The spatial Durbin model examined how the digital economy affects carbon emissions. The digital economy is reducing carbon emissions in China significantly. A national spatial spillover effect was also detected, with surrounding provinces’ carbon emissions being negatively affected.