In the current computing environment, the significance of distributed heterogeneous systems has gained prominence. The research on scheduling problems in distributed systems that consider energy consumption has garnered substantial attention due to its potential to enhance system stability, achieve energy savings, and contribute to environmental preservation. However, efficient scheduling in such systems necessitates not only the consideration of energy consumption but also the ability to adapt to the dynamic nature of the system. To tackle these challenges, we propose an online energy-aware scheduling algorithm for deadline-constrained applications in distributed heterogeneous systems, leveraging dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) techniques. First, the algorithm models the continuously arriving applications and heterogeneous processors and proposes a novel task-sorting method to prioritize tasks, ensuring that more applications are completed within their respective deadlines. Second, the algorithm controls the selection range of processors based on the task’s subdeadline and assigns the task to the processor with the minimum energy consumption. Through experiments conducted with randomly generated applications, our approach consistently exhibits superior performance when compared to similar scheduling algorithms.