Improving energy productivity is one of the most cost-effective ways to achieve a sustainable development target. The existing literature has shown some factors that have driven the improvement in China's energy productivity. However, these studies do little to tackle the role of Chinese local officials. Political promotions can be seen as the most important career incentive for Chinese local officials. Hence, we intend to study whether energy productivity affects Chinese local officials' promotions in this paper. The data of position changes for the 31 provincial governors during 1978-2012 are utilized. We adopted probit models to empirically examine the correlation between provincial governors' political promotions and energy productivity. The empirical results demonstrate that (1) energy productivity has a significantly positive impact on provincial governors' political promotions in China, meaning that the provincial governors have the momentum to improve energy productivity; and (2) the effect of energy productivity on provincial governors' political promotions has evolved, dynamically changing along with the transformation of the economic growth mode and the adjustment of the local officials' promotion mechanism. The results are helpful in understanding the drivers of the improvement in China's energy productivity and provide insightful implications for conducting energy policy in China. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.