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Improving energy efficiency is essential to achieving sustainable development and promoting energy transition. Using provincial panel data of 30 regions in China from 2011 to 2020, this paper analyzes the impact of carbon emission trading on energy efficiency from the perspective of clean energy transition. The results are as follows: Carbon trading policy has a significant improvement effect on energy efficiency, and it remains valid after a series of robustness tests. Mechanism test shows an effective intermediary way of clean energy transition, in which the carbon emission policy reduces coal consumption intensity, thus optimizing energy structure and ultimately raising energy efficiency. In regions with low level of economic development and high level of marketization, carbon emissions trading plays a more significant role in improving energy efficiency. This paper helps to provide a reference for governmental departments as they optimize their strategy for promoting the construction of a national carbon emissions trading market and improving energy efficiency.

China's extensive economic growth has been accompanied with high levels of pollution, and excessive energy consumption has brought serious pollution problems. The use of financial resources to regulate green production modes and encourage high‐quality economic development has become a major focus in academia. At the same time, growth enterprise market (GEM) enterprises, which mainly operate in technology‐intensive industries, are assumed to have a simulating effect on regional innovation. Therefore, this paper utilizes the capital return differences of 4437 listed companies and 920 GEM companies based in 30 provinces of China from 2008 to 2018 to quantitatively analyze the levels of financial misallocation. With two‐stage regression method, the direct effect of financial misallocation on regional green total factor energy efficiency (GTFEE) and the indirect impact observed when taking regional innovation as an intermediary variable are discussed. Furthermore, dynamic threshold panel regression and heterogeneity analysis are used to verify the above nonlinear relationship. The empirical findings indicate that financial misallocation enhances innovation capability and further restrains GTFEE. With an improved degree of marketization and environmental regulation, the inhibitory effect of financial misallocation on GTFEE is more significant.

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