Energy efficiency and energy intensity are gradually gaining attention, and it is now an important proposition to reconcile financial development, green finance, and regional energy intensity. Using Chinese mainland provincial panel data (except Tibet) from 2007 to 2019, this paper applied the spatial econometric model and the panel threshold model to investigate the effects of financial development and green finance on regional energy intensity. The paper discovered that financial development raises regional energy intensity, while green finance reduces it. Based on the panel threshold perspective, in different stages of green finance development, the effect of financial development on regional energy intensity presents an inverted U-shaped effect that first promotes and then inhibits. Meanwhile, green finance has a significant positive spatial transmission effect on regional energy intensity. Based on the spatial weight matrix reflecting regional economic relations, the increase in energy intensity has a significant negative spatial autoregressive effect on itself, and the spatial spillover effect of financial development is negligible.

The impact of Chinese-style fiscal decentralization on regional energy intensity has long been disputed by the supporters of “federal environmentalism” and those who hold “race to the bottom” views. At the same time, with the transformation of China’s development mode, the Chinese government is paying increasing attention to the protection of ecological civilization and the realization of sustainable development, and the government’s attention to the ecological environment is becoming an important factor affecting regional energy intensity. Therefore, this paper takes the fiscal decentralization and ecological attention of local governments in China as the research object and analyzes their impact mechanism on regional energy intensity. Firstly, the entropy weight method was used to measure the comprehensive score of fiscal decentralization of Chinese local governments, and the text analysis method was used to obtain the ecological attention index of Chinese provincial local governments, which was sorted into panel data of 30 provinces (municipalities and autonomous regions) in mainland China from 2007 to 2019. The spatial econometric model and panel threshold model are structured as the means for analyzing the impact that fiscal decentralization and the ecological attention of local governments have, respectively, on regional energy intensity targets. We obtained the following conclusions: Chinese fiscal decentralization can significantly improve the regional energy intensity, and the fiscal decentralization of a region can significantly reduce the energy intensity in nearby regions; the enhancement of ecological attention of local governments will significantly inhibit regional energy intensity, and also has a significant inhibitory effect on the energy intensity of neighboring regions. As the threshold variable—which is the ecological attention of local governments—increases and reaches a certain level, fiscal decentralization will significantly and reversely inhibit regional energy intensity, indicating that the ecological attention of local governments can moderate the distortion of fiscal decentralization with regards to regional energy efficiency.

Energy efficiency and energy intensity are gradually gaining attention, and it is now an important proposition to reconcile financial marketization, fiscal decentralization, and regional energy intensity. Using Chinese mainland provincial panel data (except Tibet) from 2007 to 2019, this study applied the dynamic panel system generalized method of moments model, the spatial Durbin model, and the panel threshold model to investigate the mechanisms of financial marketization and fiscal decentralization on regional energy intensity. The study found that financial marketization can play a significant role in suppressing regional energy intensity, while fiscal decentralization promotes energy intensity. Meanwhile, financial marketization in one province can have a negative spatial transmission effect on energy intensity in other provinces, while fiscal decentralization in one province has a negative spatial spillover effect on energy intensity in other provinces. Based on the analysis of the moderating and threshold effects, financial marketization not only moderates the negative externality of fiscal decentralization, making it inhibit energy intensity in the opposite direction, but also gradually increases the moderating effect on fiscal decentralization as the degree of financial marketization increases, showing a nonlinear inhibiting effect on regional energy intensity.