1) No, removing a pod does nothing related to energy. A pod uses energy from the plant while it is growing, getting larger. This is our goal all along. Once the pod gets to full size, there is no energy spent on it and if you feel there is, please explain exactly what that energy is doing. To be fair, there is a tiny amount of energy spent pumping water up to the pod still, a maintenance level no higher than to every leaf and stem but this is not enough to be concerned about.
2) Picking a pod before it is full sized does cause the plant to stop expending energy growing it (to a larger size) so the energy is put towards further stem, leaf, and new bud growth. This is not really useful as it ends up a higher ratio of stem and leaf to pod ratio, unless your goal is a large plant rather than the peppers it produces. On the other hand this can be useful early in the plants life, picking blooms before further energy is spent to help the plant get to a good size so it starts forking off for more leaf area to catch sunlight instead of expending as much energy growing the first few pods.
3) Having peppers sitting on the plant does nothing to decrease new pod production. It's an urban myth that picking encourages or causes new buds. People falsely associate picking them when full sized with some kind of stimulation when all it really was, was that since the pods had grown to full size by that point, the plant was no longer expending energy on them to increase their size so that energy was freed up to grow the stems, fork off and make new buds regardless of whether the pods were picked or not.
4) Newer pods may not get as large for a number of reasons. As mentioned above, the plant pumps water (and nutrients) up to them. The further it pumps the more energy it takes to do so. New growth is also relatively smaller so the water and nutrients are pumping up a narrower area which requires more pressure. Combine that with the fact that as the plant keeps forking, it may be trying to suddenly produce twice as many peppers as it did previously, along with shorter days of sun and cooler nights, so it is a less optimal growing environment where there is less energy per pod available to grow them, so after X amount of time they only grew to whatever size they did and the enzymes vs time take over regardless of whether they grew as big as the prior pods did or not.
I'm sure there are people who disagree with point 3 above, but year after year including right now I have plenty of plants as examples to dispute the idea that the plant somehow thinks about this and waits to make buds based on whether pods are picked or left on the plant. Energy can't just disappear, once pods are full sized the plant uses that energy the same as it would otherwise - or it would burst into flames or something from excess energy.
