Theoretically, environmental management system certification can alleviate corporate financing constraints by exerting governance and information effects. This paper examines the impact of environmental management system certification on corporate financing constraints based on the empirical evidence of Chinese A-share heavy pollution enterprises in Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2007-2019. It is found that environmental management system certification can significantly alleviate corporate financing constraints, and this alleviation effect increases over time. Further considering the nature of property rights, it is found that environmental management system certification can also significantly alleviate the financing constraints of private enterprises compared to state-owned enterprises. Finally, exploring the impact mechanism, it is found that environmental management system certification can alleviate the financing constraints mainly by improving corporate environmental performance and enhancing corporate information transparency, which shows that environmental management system certification can be used as both an “environmental governance tool” to improve the environmental performance of enterprises and an “information transfer tool” to improve the information transparency of enterprises, thus alleviating enterprise financing constraints. The findings reveal that environmental management system certification has significant financing effects, and expand the study of the economic consequences of environmental management system certification and the influencing factors of corporate financing constraints.