Government energy conservation assessment policy and enterprise financial performance

Government guided and supervised energy conservation transformation represents a crucial strategic measure. It promotes sustainable development of enterprises and helps achieve the national green transformation goal. Based on the China's Top 100-1K-10K Energy-Consuming Units Program, this paper combines the newly released industrial enterprise database with the manually collected government energy conservation assessment list. We select data from 2017 to 2021 and use propensity score matching to estimate the average treatment effect of the policy. The study finds that: (1) The profitability and operational efficiency of the enterprises on the energy conservation assessment list have significantly improved, while there is no obvious difference in current cost–benefit analysis and solvency risk. (2) The heterogeneity analysis reveals that the policy exerts distinct effects on the financial performance of enterprises at different assessment levels, across various industries, and of diverse types. (3) The mandatory energy conservation assessment policy exacerbates the operational pressure on enterprises, while the voluntary energy conservation transformation policy improves the financial performance of enterprises in the long term. Based on results, this paper proffers policy recommendations for the government to stimulate the enterprises' energy conservation transformation.