To achieve the dual carbon goals, it is necessary to continuously optimize and adjust the energy structure, increase the use of clean energy on the extensive margin, and reduce the consumption proportion of fossil energy. Meanwhile, equipment upgrading should be carried out on the intensive margin to improve the utilization efficiency of fossil energy. Therefore, how to improve energy utilization efficiency while ensuring stable economic growth has become the key to energy conservation and carbon reduction for enterprises. As an important macro-regulatory tool, tax policy can change the constraints or decision-making biases faced by micro-entities. Then, can the incentives provided by tax policy guide enterprises to improve energy efficiency and achieve energy transformation? What are the effect paths and mechanisms? Answering the above questions helps to understand the governance function of tax policy in responding to climate change and provides policy implications for the realization of China’s dual carbon goals. This paper sets up a quasi-natural experiment based on the implementation of China’s 2018 Value-Added Tax credit refund policy (Caishui No. 70). Using the samples of Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies from 2014 to 2022, by comparing the systematic differences between pilot industries and non-pilot industries before and after the policy, it provides key evidence for tax incentives to guide enterprises’ energy transformation. The research finds that the value-added tax credit refund can significantly promote enterprises to improve energy efficiency, and this conclusion still holds after a series of robustness tests. Among them, increasing investment in environmental protection equipment and promoting green technology innovation on the energy-saving path, and alleviating financing constraints and increasing fixed-asset investment on the production-increasing path are all key mechanisms for the credit refund policy to promote enterprises to improve energy efficiency. Further research shows that the implementation of the credit refund policy has more obvious effects in the central and western regions and regions with relatively strict environmental supervision, and has better effects on state-owned enterprises, non-heavy-polluting enterprises, and enterprises facing strong financing constraints. The research conclusion of this paper shows that guiding tax incentives, like punitive tax incentives, can produce significant green governance effects. This means that in the process of practicing energy transformation and achieving the dual carbon goals, in addition to taking restrictive governance measures, incentive-based governance measures cannot be ignored. Facing the pressure of economic transformation, the combined use of restrictive and incentive-based measures is a key measure to improve energy efficiency while maintaining stable economic growth, and it is also an inherent requirement for building a green tax system.