The effect of green finance on industrial pollution emissions: Evidence from China

At present, China is undergoing a transformation from high-speed growth to high-quality development, and environmental protection is placed in a very important position. To explore the relationship between the pollution and green finance, this research uses the data of 30 provinces from 2001 to 2020 to calculate the provincial level green finance index and further examines the non-linear influence of green finance on industrial pollution emissions based on Kuznets Curve. Three types of pollutants are selected to generate the green Kuznets curves, and the "inverted N" curves were obtained to express the relationship between green finance and industrial pollution emission. For regional heterogeneity, the results show that relationship between green finance and industrial pulltion emission has regional heterogeneity for three types of pollutants, which can be attributed to different regional industrial structures to some extent. Hence, upgrading industrial structure is a win-win solution for green finance development and industrial pulltion emission reduction.