Optimization of Port Layout to Determine Greenhouse Gas Emission Gaps
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This study presents findings from an analysis of port management and CO2 emissions. A brief literature review was carried out, then comparisons between different ports, their energy use and GHG emissions are compared and discussed. I consider that the study is good enough to be considered for publication, however a few aspects must be addressed first.
The language is ok, English can be improved and non-English sentences should be removed.
Lines 33-43: the conceptual link between these two paragraphs should be improved.
Lines 60/61: not only that, but they are also relevant worldwide due to GHG emissions related to global climate change.
Lines 95-102: CO2 emissions do not have a local/city impact, but other air pollutants associated with fossil fuels do.
Lines 119-120: one must be careful with the word searches - "carbon dioxide" or "GHG" should have also been included in the search terms. Also, were these the only documents resulting for the search? If not, which criteria was used to select the studies evaluated? Higest citations? Newest? Maybe some criteria such as relevance to the study? Please clarify.
Line 128 - instead of "opinion" (which sounds not very scientific), I recommend using words such as "assessment", "evalutaion", etc.
Lines 130-131: provide a reference for the Likert scale.
Materials and methods section: authors should provide references of other studies using similar methods, or from where these equations were adotped from, etc. This is a multisciplinary journal with a broad international audience, so keep in mind many readers won't be familiar with these methodologies.
Section 4: The term "consumption" for CO2 in section 4.1 (title, table titles and text) might confuse readers. Also, in the following section (4.2), authors use "consumption" in the title but "emission" in the table titles. Please explain what this word means (for example, CO2 emissions from energy consumption), drawing from the provided references if necessary, or consider changing this word to a less confusing term.
Data from 2021 was used to compare ports. Is it possible to consider data from one year to be representative of a port's acitvities? Are there considerable fluctuations in these values from year to year?
Conclusions
What are the main conclusion of the study? How does it help understanding the best management processes to adopt and which ones to avoid, or to adjust, or how to adjust them, in order to mitigate GHG emissions? How about the GHG emissions redctions from using more eletricity? This should also be present in the conclusions.
Lines 320-321: This is as expected... But what could be done to improve port sustainability in developing countries?
Lines 337-339: This is also a rather logical conclusion - larger ports emit more GHG. However, it is important to point out here that the Chilean ports, even though smaller, moved 10% more cargo, therefore, are more efficient and more sustainable. Which factors contributed to these advantages? This discussion should be present in the conclusions.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
This article clearly belongs to the journal. However, the articles required significant improvement.
There are some typos throughout the manuscript. Moreover, there is a subscript issue, especially for CO2 and parenthesis issues (i.e Keywords: CO2 emissions, 2. Energy management in ports (optimization OR CO2)). The authors should review the whole manuscript and fix these issues. The authors should review the whole manuscript to improve. The structure of the manuscript needs to be improved (it is unnecessary to provide subheadings in the introduction section). The proposed methodology is not clear. The conclusions of the study don’t match the title of the article.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Please see the attachment.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors have done a great job to address the reviewer's comments and this article can be published.
Reviewer 3 Report
accept
