Renewable Energy Investment under Carbon Emission Regulations

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

In the abstract section, sentences are too long, so it is hard to follow the train of thought. A much better description of what this paper is about was provided in the Introduction – second paragraph.

Typos and not understandable lines (18, 62, 78-79, 93-94, …).

Saying “hot topic” is the inadequate use of colloquial language (line 54).

Literature review needs to be rewritten. In some cases, you specify the country, in other methodology, and in others, you provide the overall conclusion without giving any prior information about the research.

What I find lacking is the more detailed discussion of the results. The conclusion is also a bit short.

Please provide more references throughout the text. 18 references are quite low for a manuscript of this quality.

Kind regards,

Author Response

Dear Editor and Reviewers:

Thanks for your valuable comments on our manuscript “Renewable Energy Investment under Carbon Emission Regulations”. The authors agreed that these comments can improve the manuscript greatly.

    In this revised version, we rewrite the abstract and the literature review and make some other revisions/corrections according to the reviewers’ comments. We also highlight the revisions/corrections in the context.

   Please see the following for the point-by-point responses.

  Thanks!

Regards

Sincerely,

Feng CAI

Point-by-point responses to Reviewer 1’s Comments

1. In the abstract section, sentences are too long, so it is hard to follow the train of thought. A much better description of what this paper is about was provided in the Introduction – second paragraph.

Response: We revised the abstract. The sentences are shorter and easier to understand. Thanks for the advice.

2. Typos and not understandable lines (18, 62, 78-79, 93-94, …).

Response: We appreciate the reviewer’s carefully read. We check the paper and revise the typos and the misunderstanding words, which are listed as follows.

Line 18: “diLemma”  → “dilemma”

Line 62: delete “optimal per-unit carbon emissions is monotone in the price.” 

Line 78-79: “We consider a risk-neutral energy supplier (denote by ES hereafter) sells electricity to an uncertain demand market. Conventionally, the energy supplier buys coal to produce electricity, which is called traditional energy (denote by TE)”

→ “We consider a risk-neutral energy supplier (ES) sells electricity to an uncertain demand market. The conventional energy supplier buys fuel (e.g. coal) to generate electricity, we call this kind of energy   traditional energy (denote by TE).”

Line 93-94: “If the RE station is established, then the fixed setup cost is k_s, where s denotes the total units of the electricity that the RE station can supply (i.e., RE station capacity). Due to the renewable energy is generated by the solar or wind, we assume that the RE unit margin cost is neglect.”

→ “Denote …. Since solar and wind account for the majority of the renewable energy output, then we assume that the renewable energy unit margin cost is negligible (see [4] for the same assumption).”

3. Saying “hot topic” is the inadequate use of colloquial language (line 54).

Response:

 “The study of the carbon emission is a hot topic in recent years.” 

→ “In the line of carbon emission problem....”

4. Literature review needs to be rewritten. In some cases, you specify the country, in other methodology, and in others, you provide the overall conclusion without giving any prior information about the research.

Response:  We appreciate the reviewer’s suggestion. In this version, we rewrite the literature review from three aspects, renewable energy, coal-electricity, and carbon emission constraint. We also review some recently published papers which we haven’t read before. 

5. What I find lacking is the more detailed discussion of the results. The conclusion is also a bit short.

Response:  Thanks for the reminder. We make some more discussions in this version, including line 148-152 and line158-162. We revise some discussions, such as the paragraphs behind Property 2 and 3. We also revise the conclusion.

6. Please provide more references throughout the text. 18 references are quite low for a manuscript of this quality.

Response:

In this revised version, we replenish some recently published papers which we haven’t read before. 

Reviewer 2 Report

This is an interesting study and its quality is good, I think.  However, I would suggest that the authors should write out the abbreviations before they use, see for example IPPC.

Another concern is that the numerical simulations are based on some parameters but they are not being explained.

Finally the authors should provide shortcomings of this research, if any and they suggest some future directions of research in this field.

Author Response

Dear Editor and Reviewers:

Thanks for your valuable comments on our manuscript “Renewable Energy Investment under Carbon Emission Regulations”. The authors agreed that these comments can improve the manuscript greatly.

    In this revised version, we rewrite the abstract and the literature review and make some other revisions/corrections according to the reviewers’ comments. We also highlight the revisions/corrections in the context.

   Please see the following for the point-by-point responses.

  Thanks!

Regards

Sincerely,

Feng CAI

Point-by-point responses to Reviewer 2’s Comments

1. This is an interesting study and its quality is good, I think.  However, I would suggest that the authors should write out the abbreviations before they use, see for example IPPC.

Response:  Thanks for the comments. We check the paper and revise some abbreviations, including IPCC, which denotes “The   Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change”; CEADs, which means “China Emission Accounts and Datasets”.

2. Another concern is that the numerical simulations are based on some parameters but they are not being explained.

Response: Thanks for the reminder. We add some parameter explanations in this revised version at the beginning of Section 5 Numerical Simulation, including F=N(^.,^.), k_s, and δ. All the parameters are listed in Table 1, page 13.

3. Finally, the authors should provide shortcomings of this research, if any and they suggest some future directions of research in this field.

 Response: Thanks for the suggestions. In this revised version, we revise the conclusion, state the shortcomings of this work (doesn’t involve the carbon emission trade system or intermittence of renewable energy), and list two possible future directions of this research.

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The revised version of the manuscript reads fine