Green bonds are one of the most significant financial innovations to address the impacts of climate change and to help companies and governments to finance their ecological transition. The green bond market has been growing rapidly worldwide since its debut in 2007. In this paper, we present the first empirical study on the effects of ownership structure on green bond issuance by firms in France from 2013 to 2019. After compiling a comprehensive green bond dataset, we used legitimacy, stakeholders, and slack resources theories to investigate institutional investors and public authority ownership impact on green bond issuance. Our results confirm the heterogeneity of institutional investors and highlight a positive relation between insurance company and public authority ownership and green bond issuance.