Multicriterial Evaluation of Renewable Energy Expansion Projects at Municipal Level for the Available Biomass Potential
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear Authors,
Thank you for sharing your very interesting work. The integration of "soft" factors and public engagement are very important to the success and co-design of future energy solutions.
I believe that the research design is robust and you include many of the necessary details to support the new method and the results. Some of my comments are probably a result of the structure of the paper. I would suggest to carefully revise and restructure the paper in a way that it is coherent. At the current form the introduction creates many questions to the reader and it is hard to understand what is the main aim and method. In addition, it is very hard to follow the selection of objectives, values and the weighting and understand how it works exactly. At the last section I could see that the weighting is based on the subjective vote of stakeholders but I am not sure that this helps in terms of transparency and transferability/comparability.
Please find some in line comments and suggestions here:
Section 1 : Introduction. The authors may want to refer to NIMBY related literature to support their arguments.
I would expect that public engagement and local consultation are part of the scoping and the environmental impact assessment. It might help to add a short description of the process to acquire planning permissions in Germany.
Line 51: “This study addresses that gap with the introduction of a new method to integrate social acceptance into a holistic project development approach.” Please consider rewording.
Line 53: I believe that some context is missing here. Where did the study take place and what is the project about? The manuscript mentions Germany and local biogas but it would be good to describe the area and some details regarding the existing and planned RES. * I have found that info in line 180. I would suggest you revise the introduction to read as a coherent story as it creates questions that make it hard to follow. I think Section 3.1 fits better into introduction than results.
What is the multi-objective function about?
Line 56: “aligns closely with” ? Please consider rewording.
Line 57: What are the soft and hard characteristics? Policy and infrastructure for example?
Line 65: If it is still under review then it has not been published yet, but it would be useful to cite it even as in review.
Line 66: The addition of context will probably solve that but did the study focus on the expansion of existing biogas facilities that are used for electricity generation?
Line 69: The municipalities of the whole Germany?
Line 108: Have the groups been arbitrarily selected?
Line 110: I am not sure I can understand how the weighting works. Does this mean that 3 schools have a weighting factor of 3 whereas 6 schools have a factor of 6? Could the authors please consider providing an example? * I have found the example in line 242. As I mentioned before, the structure and the introduction are rather confusing and need some revision.
Line 112: What are the nine objectives and why a logarithmic scale is more appropriate here?
Line 127: Would it still be possible to compare between projects and their rating if dynamic adjustments are allowed? How is transparency achieved in that process?
Line 148: What is the practical meaning of neutral achievement? No change in conditions?
Line 160:Where does the 45% come from? Is this the weight of Public engagement shows as 50% in Figure 3?
Line 167: How did the authors decide on the five out of 74 measures and what makes them representative? Are the 5 measures used as example and the method still uses all 74 measures?
Line 195: Reference error?
Line 193: Could the authors please include a short description of the EEG2017 scheme?
Line 235: Is there a seasonal variation in the biogas potential and generation capacity? Does the generation during the full load hours match demand or the full load hours could be night-time for example?
Do the feed in tariffs change and are the tariffs given according to metered electricity or generation estimations based on capacity?
Line 244: How and who decided on the weighting? Was that the result of workshops with researchers and the stakeholders, interviews or questionnaire surveys?
Line 306: I believe it would be a fair comparison to use the grid’s carbon intensity, that would be the average carbon emissions from electricity generation in Germany. For specific pollutants there should be data about the quantities according to the current national electricity generation mix. As the biomass plants are likely used for peak load electricity maybe the pollution could be compared with other peak load electricity generating technology.
I look forward to reading the final version of your paper. I wish you good luck with your future research.
Thank you.
Author Response
Thank you for this detailed and very specific review. The comments have helped us to identify and exploit some major potential for improvement of our paper. Your review was very helpful and constructive and we hope that you find your suggestions for improvement properly implemented in the appropriate places. Please find our point-by-point response to your comments in the attached PDF file.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Please consider whether it is necessary to cite the same literature source more than once in the same paragraph: "Lack of social acceptance can delay and interrupt RES projects [2–4]. Often local stakeholders feel insufficiently involved in decision-making and the sharing of burden and benefits. The impact of renewable generation capacities for the local population tends to be quite excessive, ranging from visible changes to odor and noise emissions. On the other hand, successful RES projects also bare benefits such as employment, improved image and additional income through power production [3–6]."
The literature review is incomplete. There are too few references to the 2020 publication in References. Only after a review of current scientific publications (also from 2020) is it possible to analyze the problem contained in the manuscript.
Author Response
Thank you very much for your review of our paper. According to your assumptions we have extended our literature research by some more recent publications that are now also part of the papers introduction. Please find our response to your comments with the line numbers in the attached PDF file.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The authors' proposal presented in the paper is very interesting, and the results can be of real use at the level of municipalities. The example used refers to a rural municipality, but the authors do not justify why they used this example.
What is the motivation for this choice?
I recommend that the authors justify the choice and specify why this example is appropriate. I recommend that the authors bring a set of arguments to convince interested readers that the example used can lead to a generalization, at least in rural areas.
I recommend that the authors complete Chapter 4 with a conclusion, even if this moment may be of an intermediate nature, considering the stated perspectives. Currently, the conclusion can be drawn by readers from the results presented by the authors, but the interpretation made by the authors is more important.
I recommend that authors correct line 195 where an error is reported “Fehler! Verweisquelle konnte nicht gefunden werden.”
Author Response
Thank you very much for your review. Your comments were found useful. The requested changes helped improving the paper. Please find our point-by-point response in the attached PDF file.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
This paper proposes a new method (HomE), to predict future or failure of renewable energy resources projects based on political, and social issues at early stage of project development. This new method could be coupled to an existing method (BioPot) which provides technical and economic analysis for the implementation of RES projects.
The paper is well-structured, providing an informative introduction and clear methodology. Results are well presented and are followed by a substantial and critical discussion which shows both the applicability and suggests the necessary improvements for the proposed model. In the discussion section several questions which rose while I was reading the results section were answered. For example, it became clear that future work should improve the analysis for social impact and explore further some predefined objectives, such as Regionalization, which seemed important to all stakeholders but was eventually dismissed for the final analysis, when major decisions were based on profit-driven techno-economic values.
This work shows a great potential for application and capacity to generate real positive socio-economic impacts.
Please review the abstract emphasizing the article's main findings and Indicating the main conclusions and discussions. Perhaps the suggestion of future work which is not presented in the paper should be less important for the abstract.
Please, check the error message in line 195, since it seems that a reference source was lost.
Please, check the line spacing format before and after figures and tables.
Author Response
Thank you very much for your kind review and positive feedback as well as for your interest in our work. You will find our response to your comments in the attached PDF file.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The revised manuscript may be accept in present form.
