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Against the backdrop of working hard to build a beautiful country, this paper uses the promulgation of the “Green Credit Guidelines” policy in China as a quasi-natural experiment. Based on a difference-in-differences (DID) model, the results show that, since the promulgation of the Green Credit Guidelines policy, financial institutions have significantly reduced the proportion of long-term debt to heavily polluting enterprises for reasons such as risk aversion and total credit constraints. Due to capital constraints and the restrictive terms of credit approval, the Green Credit Guidelines policy reduces the investment scale and overinvestment of heavily polluting enterprises. The dependency relationship of the debt maturity structure of heavily polluting enterprises with the investment scale and investment efficiency has been reduced. Furthermore, the negative net effect of the Green Credit Guidelines policy on long-term debt is more pronounced in heavily polluting enterprises that lack political connections. However, the promulgation of this policy inhibits the investment scale and the investment efficiency of heavily polluting enterprises (with or without political connections). To a certain extent, these results confirm the “supportive hand” perspective towards political connections. The results of this research could help relevant government departments to understand the microeconomic consequences of the Green Credit Guidelines policy and could help improve and perfect China’s green credit policy.

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The Environmental Protection Law, which includes 70 articles and major changes in six aspects compared to the old law, is called in Chinese society the new Environment Protection Law. When the law was implemented in 2014, it was an important event in China that could be seen as a natural experiment. Based on a difference-in-differences model, this paper considers all of the listed heavily polluting enterprises between 2011 and 2016 as the experimental group and all of the other firms in the same industries listed on the Chinese stock market as the control group and examines the impact of the new Environmental Protection Law on the corporate financing of heavily polluting enterprises and its mechanisms. The results show that the strict environmental law caused Chinese listed enterprises to face higher environmental regulation costs, public pressure and environmental litigation. The financing capacity of heavily polluting enterprises has dropped significantly, especially in areas with higher regulatory intensity. Furthermore, since the new Environmental Protection Law was established, overinvestment by China’s heavily polluting enterprises has been significantly inhibited, and the decline in financing capacity exerts a mediating effect. The ultimate economic consequences of the new Environmental Protection Law are to decrease the corporate value of heavily polluting industries.

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