Total Factor Energy Efficiency, Carbon Emission Efficiency, and Technology Gap: Evidence from Sub-Industries of Anhui Province in China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The topic is up-to-date and interesting and the article is easy to read. The structure of the article is mostly clear and abstract and highlights appropriate. In my opinion, there are issues in the manuscript the authors should consider for making it publishable. In general, the discussion is heavily missing and this is, frankly, the main problem with this paper. Possible suggestions for improvement are in the following line:

My major concern is that the paper is not positioned in the environment literature and the contribution is not clearly articulated. Please more clearly position the paper and justify the set-up with the study in the introduction of the paper. Which research the authors aim to address and why it is important to address such gaps? The authors are encouraged to strengthen the theoretical underpinning of this research. This may include to conduct more in-depth literature review and strengthen the connections between your findings and prior literature; please see, for example:

Barba-Sanchez, V. & Atienza-Sahuquillo, C. (2016). Environmental Proactivity and Environmental and Economic Performance: Evidence from the Winery Sector. Sustainability, 8(10), 1014; doi:10.3390/su8101014

Junquera, B. & Barba-Sanchez, V. (2018). Environmental Proactivity and Firms’ Performance: Mediation Effect of Competitive Advantages in Spanish Wineries. Sustainability, 10(7), 2155; doi:10.3390/su10072155

Discussion and conclusions should also include a reflexion and critical discussion about results in the light of previous studies as well as provide more convincing arguments about the contributions of your manuscript (reinforce implication to theory with a research agenda and also considering your limitations). I would recommend adding a specific epigraph on the limitations of the study and future work. Finally, is there any idiosyncratic environmental dimension to the proactive strategy in the case of Sub- industries of Anhui Province in China?

I hope you find the above comments useful and I wish you the best of luck with developing the paper further.

Author Response

The topic is up-to-date and interesting and the article is easy to read. The structure of the article is mostly clear and abstract and highlights appropriate. In my opinion, there are issues in the manuscript the authors should consider for making it publishable. In general, the discussion is heavily missing and this is, frankly, the main problem with this paper. Possible suggestions for improvement are in the following line:

Response: Thanks for your encouragement and confirmation. We are honored to receive the comments from you. We've added the discussion section.

My major concern is that the paper is not positioned in the environment literature and the contribution is not clearly articulated. Please more clearly position the paper and justify the set-up with the study in the introduction of the paper. Which research the authors aim to address and why it is important to address such gaps? The authors are encouraged to strengthen the theoretical underpinning of this research. This may include to conduct more in-depth literature review and strengthen the connections between your findings and prior literature; please see, for example:

Barba-Sanchez, V. & Atienza-Sahuquillo, C. (2016). Environmental Proactivity and Environmental and Economic Performance: Evidence from the Winery Sector. Sustainability, 8(10), 1014; doi:10.3390/su8101014

Junquera, B. & Barba-Sanchez, V. (2018). Environmental Proactivity and Firms’ Performance: Mediation Effect of Competitive Advantages in Spanish Wineries. Sustainability, 10(7), 2155; doi:10.3390/su10072155

Response: Thanks for the comment. The research direction of this paper is energy environment, we have added the above two references in this paper. This paper mainly studies the total factor energy efficiency and carbon emission efficiency of industrial industry in Anhui province. Take Anhui Province as an example because we find that under the industrial sector, the conclusions reached at the national level are contrary to those reached by a specific province. and the research in this area is less, so this paper fills this gap. And there is some innovation in the method, which solves the problem of TGR greater than 1 when using meta-frontier and SBM model. We also illustrate the contribution of this paper in the introduction section, strengthen the link between the conclusion and previous research.

Discussion and conclusions should also include a reflexion and critical discussion about results in the light of previous studies as well as provide more convincing arguments about the contributions of your manuscript (reinforce implication to theory with a research agenda and also considering your limitations). I would recommend adding a specific epigraph on the limitations of the study and future work. 

Response: We thanks for the comment. We have reinforced the contribution of this paper by adding a discussion of the previous literature in discussion. At the same time, we show the limitations of this paper at the end of this paper.

Finally, is there any idiosyncratic environmental dimension to the proactive strategy in the case of Sub- industries of Anhui Province in China?

Response: We thanks for the comment. We have added a section of Discussion in this version, which provides more discussion about the environmental performance of Anhui province.

I hope you find the above comments useful and I wish you the best of luck with developing the paper further.

Response: Thanks again for your useful comments. These are really helpful to improve our paper.

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript entitled “Total Factor Energy Efficiency, Carbon Emission Efficiency and Technology Gap: Evidence from Sub-industries of Anhui Province in China” investigates a classic topic in energy economics and is clearly within the scope and interests of Sustainability and its target audience. However, the article is not ready for publication in the current form. I have several major concerns that are outlined in the following.

Above all things, please make the contributions of the paper clear. It seems that the core contribution of this research is a valuable case study since the methods applied in the study are well-known. There have been, however, a bunch of studies analyzing TFEE and CEE of China, including “Anhui Province.”

Second, the manuscript is not well organized. As I addressed, the methods used in this research are not a new one, so make them concise, please. There are so many redundant explanations and information in the manuscript. For example, the first three paragraphs are cliché and out-of-dated. Table 2 could be moved into a separate document such as “supporting information,” and there’s no need to show all results of efficiency indices in Table 4-6. I think the authors could make them concise in general.

Third, please correct minor errors. Re-check the usage of abbreviations, the title of figures, and so on. Footnote one would be replaced as a citation.

Overall, my recommendation is a major revision.

Author Response

The manuscript entitled “Total Factor Energy Efficiency, Carbon Emission Efficiency and Technology Gap: Evidence from Sub-industries of Anhui Province in China” investigates a classic topic in energy economics and is clearly within the scope and interests of Sustainability and its target audience. However, the article is not ready for publication in the current form. I have several major concerns that are outlined in the following.

Response: Thanks for your valuable concerns!

Above all things, please make the contributions of the paper clear. It seems that the core contribution of this research is a valuable case study since the methods applied in the study are well-known. There have been, however, a bunch of studies analyzing TFEE and CEE of China, including “Anhui Province.”

Response: Thanks for the comment. We have added a section of Discussion in this version. Also, we discussed the contribution of the present paper in the last section which includes two major contributions: (1) this is a new application studies of DEA approach with new data; (2) the existing SBM approach under meta-frontier might over evaluate the efficiency scores under meta-frontier, and we resolve this problem by constructing the new models.

Second, the manuscript is not well organized. As I addressed, the methods used in this research are not a new one, so make them concise, please. There are so many redundant explanations and information in the manuscript. For example, the first three paragraphs are cliché and out-of-dated. Table 2 could be moved into a separate document such as “supporting information,” and there’s no need to show all results of efficiency indices in Table 4-6. I think the authors could make them concise in general.

Response: Thank you for the suggestion. We have rearrange and rewrite the first three paragraphs of the article to be concise and clear. Table 2….. Table 4-7 has been reduced.

Third, please correct minor errors. Re-check the usage of abbreviations, the title of figures, and so on. Footnote one would be replaced as a citation.

Response: Thanks for the suggestion. We have re-checked and revised the minor errors in the article and deleted footnote 1.

Overall, my recommendation is a major revision.

Response: Thanks for giving us the chance to revise our paper better according to your comments.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I am satisfied with the changes made in response to my comments.

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors successfully revised the manuscript based on the comments. I have no further questions except one; please make the font in the figures consistent.