Energy bias in technical change is an important real-world productivity driving green economic growth, and it is also the main reason why developed countries can achieve simultaneous economic growth and emission reduction. Meanwhile, as a key channel for obtaining transnational technological spillovers, outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) is considered an important carrier for transmitting the energy bias in technical change from abroad, and it has gradually become the main way for late-developing countries to agglomerate global innovation resources.

This paper attempts to introduce the strategy of OFDI in developed countries into the theoretical framework of biased technical change, constructing and measuring the degree of energy factor bias in technical change at China’s provincial level. The study finds that China’s OFDI in developed countries significantly and reversely promotes domestic technical change to favor the use of capital and labor factors, thereby relatively saving energy factors. Among them, R&D spillover and pressure transmission are important reverse transmission mechanisms. Further analysis shows that internal R&D investment has a threshold effect on the impact results, leading to spatial differences; external intellectual property protection and foreign investment barriers are also important technological constraints, leading to temporal differences.

This paper makes the following marginal contributions: Theoretically, it breaks through the path dependence of traditional international investment theories on the unidirectional flow of technological potential, and constructs a unified theoretical analysis framework for OFDI and energy bias in technical change. Empirically, from the perspective of the bias in technical change among capital, labor, and energy factors, it quantitatively analyzes the degree of energy factor bias in technical change, and closely addresses the challenges of the current era under the wave of global green competition and digital competition. This paper not only enriches the current international direct investment theory regarding capital flow from “low-technological potential regions” to “high-technological potential regions” in theory, but also provides valuable references for the reverse OFDI strategy of Chinese multinational enterprises in practice.