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The concept of the twin transition promotes leveraging synergies between the digital and sustainability transitions. This introduction to the special issue takes an innovation economic perspective to examine the development of digital green technologies for, and the adoption by, carbon-intensive sectors. It reveals how entrepreneurial activity and the innovation system evolution have led to cost-economic, organizational, and technical lock-ins. Moreover, it shows that to reduce CO2 emissions, firms favor (digital) green ‘tech fixes’ to increase efficiency or save energy (e.g., by adding data collection and smart process control) over pursuing a ‘paradigm shift’ toward a decarbonized production system (e.g., by electrification, or changing feedstock or chemical agent). Recognizing that deep decarbonization may not be possible within the necessary time window, digital green tech plays an indispensable, transitory role. Consequently, innovation (system) policy thus has to promote both entrepreneurship for digital green tech and governance of a sector-transcending, transformative innovation system for deep decarbonization. The six papers in this special issue address various aspects of the digital green tech development path.JEL Codes: O31, O14, O33, Q55, Q58, Q52