As one of the environmental governance tools used to achieve green and low-carbon development in China, the ability of carbon emission trading schemes (CETS) to promote the green transition of enterprises is key to assessing the effectiveness of their implementation. Therefore, this paper used the panel data of China A-share listed heavy-polluting enterprises from 2010 to 2019, adopted the super-SBM model and GML index to measure the green total factor productivity (GTFP) of enterprises as an indicator of green transition, and further employed a staggered difference-in-difference model (DID) based on propensity score matching (PSM) to investigate the impact and mechanism of CETS on the green transition of enterprises. The results revealed that CETS significantly improved the green development efficiency of heavy-polluting enterprises and promoted green transition. In addition, the promotion was more pronounced among enterprises with weak cost transfer abilities, low levels of financing constraints, and high-quality internal control systems as well as in areas with high environmental enforcement intensity. More importantly, the mechanism analysis showed that heavy-polluting enterprises mainly chose to increase green technological innovation, especially substantive green technological innovation, and accelerated productive capital renewal to achieve their green transition targets. This study provides empirical evidence for improving the construction of the national carbon emission trading market and promoting the green transition and low-carbon development of heavy-polluting enterprises.

To promote greenhouse gas emission reduction, China has proposed a dual carbon target to achieve carbon peaking by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060. Since 2013, China has opened an increasing number of carbon emission trading pilot projects, and at this stage, China’s carbon emission trading policy has been gradually promoted to the whole country; therefore, how can marine economy be affected under the promotion of carbon trading policy? This paper uses the difference in differences method to study the data of marine industry structure of Chinese coastal provinces from 2010 to 2018. The study finds that carbon trading policies promote the upgrading of the marine industry structure, and further verifies that the impact of carbon trading policies on the upgrading of the marine industry structure is spatially heterogeneous. In other words, the carbon trading policy also has a significant promoting effect on the provinces within 160 km of the pilot provinces, but the effect will be weaker than that of the pilot provinces; at 160–320 km from the pilot provinces, the carbon trading policy has no significant promoting effect on the provinces within this range; at 320–960 km from the pilot provinces, the effect of the carbon trading policy on the provinces within this range becomes negative and significant, showing a suppressive effect. The experimental findings of this paper will provide a reference for China to achieve its carbon neutrality goal and realize a strong ocean state.