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Improving energy-environmental efficiency (EEE) is an important way to achieve China’s carbon peak, carbon-neutral goals and green transformational development. The scale of imports of intermediate goods has been increasing rapidly with the deepening of China’s opening up to the outside world, which has played a positive role in promoting high-quality development. Considering that enterprises are the main players in transforming energy consumption patterns and high-quality development, we investigated the impact of imported intermediate goods on EEE from a microfield perspective. The empirical results showed that imported intermediate goods significantly contributed to EEE and that firms’ innovation capacity and productivity are the corresponding influencing mechanisms. The effects of importing intermediate goods in foreign-invested enterprises, enterprises in the eastern and coastal regions and capital-intensive enterprises are more obvious in improving EEE. Further expansion of imports of intermediate goods, enhancement of enterprises’ capacity for independent innovation, deepening structural reforms and accelerated development of the digital economy can help enhance the promotional effect of imports of intermediate goods on enterprises’ EEE.

In recent years, there were many researches on China Free Trade Pilot Zone (FTZ), however, there was still a lack of research on the effect of the FTZ on trade efficiency. To make up for gaps in research, this paper calculated the trade efficiency of 30 provinces in China with stochastic frontier gravity model, and then empirically tested the policy effect of the FTZ by using the propensity score matching and difference in difference (PSM-DID) method, and further analyzed the inherent mechanism. The results showed that China’s general level of trade efficiency was relatively low, while the average trade efficiency in FTZs was significantly higher. The establishment of the FTZ had a significant positive impact on trade efficiency advances. Before and after the establishment of the pilot free trade zone, the difference between the changes in the trade efficiency measurement results of the treated group provinces and the trade efficiency measurement results of the control group provinces showed the characteristics of first increasing and then decreasing, and the policy effect has a certain lag. The establishment of the FTZ significantly reduced the trade cost. The model estimated that the trade efficiency increased by 3.576% for every 1% growth of trade cost, and the policy effect of the FTZ was significantly positive, which verified the existence of the intermediary effect of trade cost.