We propose, analyze and numerically validate a new energy dissipative scheme for the Ginzburg–Landau equation by using the invariant energy quadratization approach. First, the Ginzburg–Landau equation is transformed into an equivalent formulation which possesses the quadratic energy dissipation law. After the space-discretization of the Fourier pseudo-spectral method, the semi-discrete system is proved to be energy dissipative. Using diagonally implicit Runge–Kutta scheme, the semi-discrete system is integrated in the time direction. Then the presented full-discrete scheme preserves the energy dissipation, which is beneficial to the numerical stability in long-time simulations. Several numerical experiments are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme and verify the theoretical analysis.