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The literature on growth economics mostly covers the studies on growth trajectory, convergence, issues of sustainability, etc., which are related to the so-called developed economies of the world. But the emergence of a few economies such as the members of the BRICS group in the recent past has provoked the theoreticians to shift their focus from the developed economies to these highly emerging economies as they are now chasing the countries of the developed world at least in terms of gross domestic products. But there may be differences in the roles of different factors in explaining the growth trajectories of the so-called developed economies vis-á-vis the highly emerging economies. This chapter thus aims to investigate the factors responsible for economic growth in the BRICS nations under the neoclassical growth framework for 1991–2020. The study finds that savings rate identified as the driving force behind the huge growth trends of the member countries in the group with a major contribution by China and India in the entire period, however, the results differ across sub-periods.

There have been increasing numbers of studies on the role of energy and environmental pollution upon income of the economies across the countries after the development of the endogenous growth literature. As standard practice, the factors which make explanations of why the developed countries are growing more compared to the common list of developing countries are the knowledge capital, role of institutions, etc. But, the roles of energy use and environmental resources upon economic growth have also been identified as additional source of endogenous growth. Sometimes, in certain economies, it is observed that both the factors maintain bidirectional causal relations with the level and growth of income. The present chapter aims to investigate whether energy use and environmental pollution make a cause to the level of income measured by gross domestic product, in both the long run and short run, for the world's highly developing group of economies in the nomenclature of BRICS. The period of study is taken to be 1990–2016 for which the data on all the indicators are available for the five member countries of the group. Using a VAR model, the study arrives at the conclusion that all the three are cointegrated for Brazil and Russia only. Further, there are short-run causal interplays among the three in different combinations across the member countries. While GDP and energy use are the common cause of CO2 emission for Brazil, India, and China; energy use and CO2 emissions are to GDP in India, South Africa, and China.