Given \(p\in [1,\infty )\) , we provide sufficient and necessary conditions on the non-negative measurable kernels \((\rho _t)_{t\in (0,1)}\) ensuring convergence of the associated Bourgain–Brezis–Mironescu (BBM) energies \((\mathscr {F}_{t,p})_{t\in (0,1)}\) to a variant of the p-Dirichlet energy on \(\mathbb {R}^N\) as \(t\rightarrow 0^+\) both in the pointwise and in the \(\Gamma \) -sense. We also devise sufficient conditions on \((\rho _t)_{t\in (0,1)}\) yielding local compactness in \(L^p(\mathbb {R}^N)\) of sequences with bounded BBM energy. Moreover, we give sufficient conditions on \((\rho _t)_{t\in (0,1)}\) implying pointwise and \(\Gamma \) -convergence and equicoercivity of \(({\mathscr {F}}_{t,p})_{t\in (0,1)}\) when the limit p-energy is of non-local type. Finally, we apply our results to provide asymptotic formulas in the pointwise and \(\Gamma \) -sense for heat content-type energies both in the local and non-local settings.