How do renewable energy policies affect energy green development? Evidence from Chinese listed energy firms

To advance energy green development, the Chinese government attaches great importance to renewable energy policies (REP). Green technological innovation (GTI) by energy firms is a critical driver of energy green development; however, how city-level REP affect the GTI of energy firms remains unresolved. To this end, using the panel data from 821 A-share listed energy firms in China covering 2004-2021, this study adopts a staggered difference-in-differences model and the number of green patent applications to proxy for GTI to investigate this issue. The relevant results are threefold. (1) REP significantly increase the GTI of Chinese energy firms by 23.9% during the research period. Compared with state-owned, small-scale, and high-tech energy firms, REP can better improve the GTI of non-state-owned, large-scale, and non-high-tech energy firms. (2) Regarding the influence mechanisms of REP on GTI, the mediating effects of financing constraints, corporate green governance, and information asymmetry are all significant, accounting for 1.065 %, 1.974 %, and 1.406 % of the total REP effect, respectively. Nevertheless, the three mediating effects are not all significant for heterogeneous energy firms. (3) As for the moderating effects, economic policy uncertainty and CEO green experience both significantly facilitate the REP effect on the GTI of Chinese energy firms, except for non-high-tech energy firms.