Assessment of BRIICS Energy Transition Policies

Achieving a global energy transition requires multidimensional policy designs, but the universal approach to international benchmarking often fails in emerging nations with diverse institutional trajectories and a heavy reliance on fossil fuels. This study systematically assesses the long-run macroeconomic performance of integrated energy policy portfolios – market-based, non-market-based, and technology support – in the expanded BRIICS economies (Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia, China, and South Africa). The policy assumption is that non-market-based mandates are more effective than MB instruments in structurally immature markets. This study uses the Dynamic Common Correlated Effects Pooled Mean Group (DCCE-PMG) estimator to neutralize unobserved global shocks synthesized with Grey Relational Analysis (GRA) for country-specific structural policy decomposition. This study uses the extended dataset from 1996 to 2024 to decisively capture post-pandemic structural shifts and resolve prevailing econometric flaws. The empirical DCCE-PMG estimations show that only stringent non-market-based command-and-control regulations have a statistically significant positive long-run macroeconomic impact on renewable electricity deployment, while market-based and technology support mechanisms remain structurally insignificant without foundational enforcement. The GRA decomposition makes explicit this macroeconomic relationship, revealing profound intra-panel heterogeneity: India is leading a balanced comprehensive transition; China capitalizes on strategically state-capitalist asymmetry; Indonesia is dangerously over-reliant on technology support; Russia has profound institutional voids in technology support; Brazil is vehemently resisting market-based integration because of agricultural fragmentation; and South Africa is collapsing catastrophically in non-market-based regulation. These findings conclusively refute the notion of a universal global policy benchmarking and establish that the long-term sustainability of macroeconomies depends on localized institutional capacity-building and tailored non-market-based regulatory structures that are appropriate for specific structural circumstances