Green innovation is not only a significant source of sustainable enterprise development, but it is also critical to China’s aim of carbon peak and carbon neutrality. Under the current context of informatization and resource-based development, whether the public resource trading center, as a highly standardized and unified public resource trading platform, can assist firms in improving their green innovation level merits further investigation. The policy of public resource trading centers is used as a quasi-natural experiment in this article, and empirical research is conducted using data from China’s A-share listed companies from 2008 to 2021. The study found that the establishment of public resource trading centers can considerably enhance enterprise green innovation, and this conclusion holds up after a series of robustness tests. It is worth noting that green invention patents typically have a stronger promotion effect than green utility model patents. Meanwhile, the establishment of public resource trading centers has a stronger influence on green innovation incentives for state-owned enterprises, small and mediumsized enterprises, and enterprises in high-polluting industries, according to the heterogeneity study. Furthermore, the establishment of public resource trading centers promotes green enterprise innovation through improving normalization and standardization of public resource trading and strengthening the responsibility of regional environmental supervision and management.