Green finance is indispensable for achieving sustainable development. However, existing studies have mostly explored the green finance’s impact on sustainable growth in terms of green financial product efficiency and exogenous policy shocks, lacking systematic analyses of green finance as an endogenous growth factor. Based on endogenous growth theory, this study innovatively takes green finance as a production element and derives its effect on sustainable growth under energy and environmental constraints. Using the Hamilton equation to dynamically optimize green finance allocation, we incorporate green financial capital, nonrenewable energy, and pollutant emissions into the production function and consumption and environmental quality preferences into the utility function. Taking data for 30 Chinese provinces spanning 2004–2022, this article uses the System-GMM to empirically investigate green finance’s impact on sustainable growth. The results show that the impact coefficient of the green financial index on green total factor productivity is 0.305, while the mediating effect of green technology innovation accounts for 21.21%. The moderating effect model analyzes the effects of industrial structure rationalization (RIS) and industrial structure advancement (AIS) in the influence path. RIS has a significant positive moderating effect, with a coefficient of 0.185, while the moderating effect of AIS is not significant. Analyses of regional and temporal heterogeneity show that the effect is stronger in the eastern and northeastern regions. Moreover, the green finance’s effects have become significantly stronger since 2016. Based on these findings, we make policy recommendations for improving green finance and sustainable growth.

该文章以“Effect of green finance on sustainable growth: evidence from China”为题，发表在《Environment, Development and Sustainability》