Climate change and environmental issues caused by carbon emissions have attracted the attention of governments around the world. Drawing on the experience of the EU, China is actively developing a national carbon emissions trading market, trying to encourage emission entities to incorporate carbon emissions reduction into production and consumption decisions through carbon pricing. Is this scheme an effective market-incentivized environmental regulatory policy? Since China successively launched ETS pilots in 2013, the effectiveness of reducing carbon emissions has become one of the current focus issues. This study uses the difference-in-differences (DID) method to evaluate the impact of ETS implementation on emissions reduction and employs the Super-SBM model in data envelopment analysis (DEA) to evaluate the emission-reduction efficiency of eight ETS pilots in China. We find that the carbon trading policy has achieved emission-reduction effects in the implementation stage, and the greenness of economic growth has a significant positive impact on regional GDP. The establishment of China’s unified carbon market should be coordinated with regional development. Some supporting measures for regional ecological compensation and the mitigation of regional development are yet to be adopted.

The impact of China’s green finance policies on renewable energy, clean energy, and other green companies is a hot topic of concern. This study uses the difference-in-differences (DID) model to examine the incentive effect of the Green Credit Guidelines (GCG) on the technological innovation and financial performance of Chinese listed green enterprises. The heterogeneity analysis is carried out from the level of digital finance, green development, and marketization. This study finds that: (1) Green finance is conducive to stimulating the technological innovation and financial performance of green enterprises. (2) Green enterprises in areas with high digital finance levels have a more significant incentive effect on green finance policies, compared to areas with less-developed digital finance. (3) Green enterprises in areas with high levels of green development are more significantly positively affected by green finance policies, compared to areas with less-developed digital finance. (4) The incentive effect of green credit policies on green enterprises in areas with a high degree of marketization is more significant, compared with regions with a lower level of green development. Finally, some policy implications are proposed to provide a reference for China to improve the green financial system to facilitate the financing of green enterprises.