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This paper analyses China’s energy consumption and economic growth spillover effects on four world regions: (i) America (North and South); (ii) Europe and Central Asia; (iii) Asia Pacific; and (iv) Africa and the Middle East. An annual aggregated time series by world region, from 1970 to 2016, and an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach were used. The results are consistent with the feedback hypothesis in the short run. With regard to the long run, feedback is present in America and the Asia Pacific. In Europe and Central Asia and in Africa and the Middle East, the results are consistent with the conservation hypothesis. Additionally, China’s spillover effects on the world energy-growth nexus are essentially a long-run phenomenon, with impacts on Europe and Central Asia, Asia Pacific, and Africa and the Middle East. Accordingly, policy-makers should be aware that China’s policies may have impact around the world, which indirectly may cause a restriction in economic growth.

This paper aims to extend the literature on the impacts of China’s policies on the world energy-growth nexus by analyzing the spillover effects of financial development and CO2 emissions. An autoregressive distributed lag approach was applied to annual series data from 1977 to 2016. Models for four world regions were developed, as well as a global model. The results reveal the traditional feedback hypothesis on the whole, both in the short- and long-run. Additionally, the results support that China’s CO2 emission and financial development promote world energy consumption. In regard to the four world regions, heterogeneous results were observed. Overall, China’s financial development and CO2 emissions also have heterogenous worldwide impacts with distinct magnitudes. Accordingly, no country should be indifferent to China’s policies, and independence should be promoted for Europe, Central Asia and Asia Pacific aggregates.

Developed countries have the resources/technologies to combat pollution even at the expense of economic growth. Developing countries are in a less fortunate position. Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) can be a tool for developed countries to transfer polluting industries, which increases pollution in host countries. However, as FDI might reduce pollution by reducing energy consumption, the pollutant effect might also be influenced. Therefore, this study examines the mediating effect of energy consumption on the impact of FDI on pollution, and the role of FDI to attain Green Growth via energy transition. The main findings indicate that FDI impacts pollution through energy consumption and that energy transition plays a vital role in reducing this mediating effect. Developing countries appear to use non-renewable energy to fill energy demand. In both groups of countries, FDI is a driver of Green Growth. However, developing countries require larger efforts to achieve Green Growth through the energy transition.

In this new era of energy transition, access to reliable and correctly functioning electricity markets is a huge concern for all economies. The restructuring path taken by most electricity markets involves the movement towards green generation structures and the increasing integration of wind and solar photovoltaic energy sources. Furthermore, it involves the electrification of energy systems, which implies a substantial increase in electricity demand levels. It is also important to add that electricity use has been pivotal in achieving efficient productivity levels in many sectors and is thus crucial to boosting economic activity. Nevertheless, this shift in generation structures has raised several challenges in electricity markets, mainly because the electricity produced from wind and solar photovoltaics is intermittent. In turn, adopting green power sources has been claimed to increase electricity price volatility and thus increase pricing risks. Therefore, to ensure that the right market signals are being sent to investors, the behaviour of electricity prices should be carefully assessed. There are three main types of pricing mechanisms commonly used in electricity markets: zonal, uniform and nodal. This study provides a short literature survey on these three pricing mechanisms. Our analysis has revealed that the assessment of the behaviour of nodal electricity price volatility is rarely studied in the literature. This fact has motivated the exploration of this topic and the consideration of the New Zealand electricity market case. The New Zealand electricity market is an energy-only system with no interconnections with other electricity markets. Furthermore, it has plenty of electricity produced from hydropower, which has a high potential to reduce price volatility through its backup role. The nodal pricing mechanism is complex, and data on it are hard to process. This paper elucidates the main challenges in processing electricity big data. Three different procedures to make this data more useable are described in detail. The main conclusions of this paper highlight the need to access easy-to-manage data and identify certain variables that significantly affect nodal prices for data which are unavailable.