Implementing MCDM Techniques for Ranking Renewable Energy Projects under Fuzzy Environment: A Case Study

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors presented research on the implementation of MCDM techniques for ranking renewable energy projects. The research work aims to select the best renewable energy projects using a hybrid decision-making framework. A new fuzzy multi-criteria hybrid model has been used to evaluate decision options and as a weight selection method - fuzzy Shannon entropy. I have the following comments on the written paper:
- lack of caption and numbering of the image (figure 4)
- bad formatting of illustrations (captions of illustrations - please format them according to the MDPI formula)
- no source reference to the map (figure 5)
- bad formatting of tables (captions and appearance - please format according to MDPI template)
- line numbering should be on the left side
- wrong numbering of sections
- lack of illustration 22 mentioned in 883 line
- formulas should be formatted in a proper way
- it should be justified why it was decided to use entropy for the selection of weights. What are the ways of determining the relevant criteria? (Kizielewicz, B., Wątróbski, J., & Salabun, W. (2020). Identification of relevant criteria set in the MCDA process-Wind farm location case study. Energies, 13(24), 6548.; Bączkiewicz, A., Kizielewicz, B., Shekhovtsov, A., Yelmikheiev, M., Kozlov, V., & Salabun, W. (2021). Comparative Analysis of Solar Panels with Determination of Local Significance Levels of Criteria Using the MCDM Methods Resistant to the Rank Reversal Phenomenon. Energies, 14(18), 5727.)
- important literature references are missing (fuzzy sets)
- Why were MOOR, VIKOR, EDAS and ARAS fuzzy methods used to solve the problem?
- What other approaches are used to deal with uncertainty in renewable energy sources? (Riaz, M., Salabun, W., Athar Farid, H. M., Ali, N., & Wątróbski, J. (2020). A robust q-rung orthopair fuzzy information aggregation using Einstein operations with application to sustainable energy planning decision management. Energies, 13(9), 2155.)
I suggest making major revisions to the article.

Author Response

Please refer to the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper is well motivated and written and provides good insight about the best renewable energy (RE) projects using a hybrid decision-making framework from a sub-national perspective. North Khorasan province is nominated as a sub-national study area for use of small-scale, large-scale, solar, hydropower, biomass, wind, and geothermal energies. The authors used a new hybrid fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making (HFMCDM) model is deployed for this research, also for the weighting of criteria, Fuzzy Shannon’s entropy is used.

The objectives of this study and its contribution to the literature are clearly stated. Although the definition of subject and concepts, the literature review, and methodology design are well done and the results are significant, the statistical analysis is oversized. The article is quite long, and some findings are sometimes predictable. A greater concision in presenting the results would improve the clarity of the paper. More specifically, about 9 pages are oversaturated by calculations and mathematical equations at the expense of a discussion of the results. The authors focus excessively (almost manneristic) on techniques and statistical results and sometimes they ignore the importance of economic inferences, political and social implications, or logical deductions.

Author Response

Please refer to the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Based on how to choose renewable resource options under the background of global climate change, this paper proposes a new hybrid fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making model, and chooses the actual case of North Khorasan for application, which has great practical significance and Practicality. However, the following problems still exist:

1. The introduction to the main research content of the article is not concise and clear enough in the abstract part. The language should be reorganized, and strive to provide a complete and clear introduction to the main research content of the article in the most concise language.
2. The introduction part contains a lot of content, which respectively introduces the social background of the research, other scholars' related research, the research introduction of this article, and the content structure of this article. It seems that the introduction part is too much, and it can be divided into several small parts, or the research introduction of this article can be put into the next part.
3. for the literature review, the related works about MCDM techniques or methods should be further rviewed, such as:A combined fuzzy DEMATEL and TOPSIS approach for estimating participants in knowledge-intensive crowdsourcing; Selection of manufacturing enterprise innovation design project based on consumer’s green preferences; Decision-making and coordination of green closed-loop supply chain with fairness concern;A multi-objective optimization model for green supply chain considering environmental benefits
4. This article chooses many evaluation indicators, including geology, water quality, etc., but in reality, to make the research method more practical, the indicators should be expanded.

Based on the above comments, it is recommended to review carefully after careful revision.

Author Response

Please refer to the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors of this paper made changes to the manuscript according to my comments. Therefore, I suggest accepting the manuscript in its present form.

Reviewer 3 Report

the authors have revised the paper well according to my comments, and it can be accepted now