Ecological network analysis can eliminate the "black box" problem in research on urban energy systems by examining the metabolic processes and pathways within these systems. This study analyzed and compared the general methods for analyzing urban energy metabolism and found that ecological network analysis was superior to other methods. We comprehensively summarized the main components of the ecological network analysis and systematically reviewed the application of this method to urban energy metabolism. Based on this analysis, we concluded that, in the future, ecological network analyses of urban energy metabolism could be improved in the following aspects:(1) expand the research scale; (2) strengthen the combination of ascendency analysis and network environ analysis; (3) compare the precision of different models.