The charm of green finance: Can green finance reduce corporate carbon emissions?

The "dual carbon" approach, which emphasizes support for environmentally friendly development and green transition, has reignited passion for green finance. Simultaneously, green finance has progressively emerged as a pivotal approach for addressing climate challenges. The paper develops green finance indicators for Chinese provinces and carbon emission indicators for 2001–2020 A-share listed enterprises. Green financing has been proven to lessen carbon output by upgrading industrial constructure and technological advancement from macroscopical view. On the micro level, carbon emissions can be reduced through three channels: financing effect, innovation effect and external supervision effect. Further research shows that green finance has worse emission reduction results on enterprises in heavy polluting industries and resource-based industries. However, the reduction effect is better for enterprises with high capital intensity and high local marketization level. This conclusion has important guiding significance for the global government on how to achieve the "double carbon" goal through green finance reasonably and effectively.