Green finance is considered a viable way to promote sustainable economic development and can effectively enhance enterprise development by alleviating financing constraints and eliminating liquidity risk. The Chinese government has formulated many policies to promote sustainable and enterprise development, including the green financial reform policy, but the implementation of the green financial reform policy is still unclear. In this context, this study employs the difference in difference (DID) method to evaluate the impact of green financial reform policy on enterprise development by using the data of 33,539 Chinese enterprises from 2007 to 2021. The empirical findings indicate that the green finance pilot policy posed a significant impact on the enterprises’ development level. The green financial reform policy accelerates enterprise development by reducing enterprise financing constraints, increasing the number of government subsidies received by enterprises, and improving corporate social responsibility. In addition, the green financial policy reform has varying impacts on various types of enterprises. The results further indicate that it has promoted advancing state-owned enterprises and low-polluting enterprises’ development toward high quality. In contrast, it has not played a similar role for non-state-owned enterprises and high-pollution enterprises. Based on the results, important policy implications are suggested to promote enterprises’ sustainable and high-quality development.

This study constructs a digital economy (DE) index and explores its impact on environmental quality by utilizing data from China’s 287 prefecture-level cities from 2013 to 2019. Unlike past studies, this research examines the indirect effect of DE on environmental pollution through the channels of industrial structure and educational investment. Further, it also analyzes the moderating role of economic globalization and green technology innovation in the nexus between DE and environmental quality. The empirical results indicate that DE significantly and positively enhances environmental quality by mitigating environmental pollution. This outcome remained stable after a series of empirical analyses and stability checks. Secondly, DE positively affects ecological and environmental quality by improving education levels and upgrading industrial structures. Thirdly, green technological innovation and economic globalization positively and significantly moderate the effect of DE development on ecological and environmental quality. Fourthly, associations between the development of DE and environmental quality are heterogeneous in terms of regions and markets, among which the most significant impact exists in the eastern area and the area with higher marketization. Based on the empirical findings, this paper provides comprehensive recommendations for promoting the DE and advancing China’s environmental quality. Based on the results, important policy implications are suggested.