China’s energy industry is not only a pillar of the national economy, but also closely related to environmental protection. Under the background of economic slow-down and environmental deterioration, the Chinese government has initiated a series of policies in order to promote the economic transition. However, what are the impacts of the new policies on China’s energy industry? By controlling the impacts of the macro economy and energy companies’ characteristics, with the sample of China’s listed energy companies the paper investigates the impacts of policies on the performance of China’s energy companies before and after the Chinese economic transition. Empirical results show that: (1) although there is shows a trend of decline in the overall performance of China’s energy companies, the performance of China’s oil and renewable companies are significantly better than that of China’s coal companies after the Chinese economic transition in investment efficiency, market value and stock return; (2) the differences in the corporate performance are more obvious in the state-owned energy companies and the companies whose primary business are energy-related. The results reveal the significantly different impacts of different policy atmospheres on the corporate performance of different energy subsectors. The policy implications of this paper are under the current difficult situation of the energy industry, Chinese government still needs to strength policy efforts to support China’s energy industry on one hand, and the energy companies also need to adjust business and investment strategies to reduce their dependence on the industrial policies on the other hand.