env-make_global_ref adds a reference to the underlying Lisp_Object
and allocates emacs_value from the global storage. env->free_global_ref
on the other hand will only remove a reference to the underlying
Lisp_Object and not free the emacs_value.

Here is a simple recipe to reproduce the problem (I only tested this
on linux). I'm attaching the necessary files.

$ gcc -shared -fpic -std=c99 -I <dir-with-emacs-module.h>
create_global_refs.c -o create_global_refs.so
$ emacs --no-splash -q -l create_global_refs.so -l create_global_refs_test.el

If you look at the memory usage of emacs (for example in htop) you'll
see that with emacs-26 it is constant but with emacs-27 the resident
memory quickly grows.