The Optimal Path for China to Achieve the “Dual Carbon” Target from the Perspective of Energy Structure Optimization

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

              The paper titled “The Optimal Path for China to Achieve the "Dual Carbon" Target from the Perspective of Energy Structure Optimization” has been taken up for review. The manuscript requires minor revisions.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Response to Reviewer #1:

1. Discuss the main objective of the paper and why the paper should be reviewed in the context of current research.

Thank Reviewer #1 for your constructive and professional comments. Inspired by your professional advice, in page 3 from 113 to 157 lines, we discuss the main objective of the paper and why the paper should be reviewed in the context of current research.

2. Give the details about "dual carbon" target and how is it related to China.

Thank Reviewer #1 for your constructive and professional comments. Inspired by your professional advice, in page 2 from 45 to 112 lines, we give the details about “Dual Carbon” target and its relations with China.

3. How does the Markov chain forecasting model help in simulating the development of energy consumption and carbon emissions under the "economic development scenario-energy structure scenario.

Thank Reviewer #1 for your constructive and professional comments. Inspired by your professional advice, in page 10 from 449 to 462 lines, we explain why we choose Markov chain forecasting model in this paper.

4. What is the multi-attribute decision model used for and what does it take into account?

Thank Reviewer #1 for your constructive and professional comments. Inspired by your professional advice, in page 22 from 922 to 934 lines and page 23 from 937 to 977 lines, we have made some additions in response to this suggestion from the Reviewer #1.

5. What are the key findings of the study?

Thank Reviewer #1 for your constructive and professional comments. Inspired by your professional advice, we condense the key findings of this paper in page 29 from 1218 to 1225 lines.

6. Discuss the main way to optimize China's energy structure according to the paper, and how can China increase the proportion of non-fossil energy consumption in the energy structure.

Thank Reviewer #1 for your constructive and professional comments. Inspired by your professional advice, in page 26 from 1093 to 1147 lines, we discuss the main way to optimize China's energy structure according to the paper, and how can China increase the proportion of non-fossil energy consumption in the energy structure.

7. Discuss the characteristics of new energy technologies in China, and how can China support these industries through financial subsidies and policy support.

Thank Reviewer #1 for your constructive and professional comments. Inspired by your professional advice, in page 27 from 1148 to 1179 lines, we discuss the characteristics of new energy technologies in China. And then we discuss how can China support these industries in page 28 from 1180 to 1196 lines

8. Which scenarios can achieve China's target of peaking carbon emissions around 2030 and achieving carbon intensity target?

Thank Reviewer #1 for your constructive and professional comments. Inspired by your professional advice, we conclude the related scenarios in third paragraph of Section 6 (in page 26 from 1093 to 1120 lines).

9. Assess the readability of the paper, including the clarity of the writing, organization, and overall presentation.

Thank Reviewer #1 for your constructive and professional comments. Inspired by your professional advice, we improve grammatical errors of this paper and try our best to ensure clarity and precision in the language used.

10. Do you have some negative outcomes that need to be included in the paper? We are grateful if you could report those findings so that other researchers could find valuable lessons from them.

Thank Reviewer #1 for your constructive and professional comments. Inspired by your professional advice, we have proposed negative outcomes in page 26 from 1075 to 1134 lines.

11. Evaluate the referencing style used in the paper, including the accuracy and completeness of the references.

Thank Reviewer #1 for your constructive and professional comments. Inspired by your advice, we have cited the references with the reference number in an “[]”, such as [1], [1,2], and [2–4].

12. Suggest any future research that could build upon the findings of the paper, and suggest any additional data that would be useful to collect.

Thank Reviewer #1 for your constructive and professional comments. Inspired by your professional advice, we discuss the further research build upon findings of this paper in page 28 from 1197 to 1208 lines.

Reviewer 2 Report

I appreciate the opportunity of providing comments for this submitted manuscript. However, I cannot recommend it to be published in the current form of quality as it reads like a homework exercise rather than a research article. 

The paper chose an interesting topic, however, falls short in providing support for the proposed research question. Both prediction and scenarios are not well-justified; without justification, it is overly theoretical and lacking policy implications. 

The literature review section is not helpful to support answering the research question being proposed. A literature review should be synthesis and analytical beyond purely describing who did what. In addition, the presentation of results should be significantly improved. The authors should distill the key takeaways from the results - this is your findings. Reporting ten digits of numbers do not help interpreting the results. 

Author Response

Response to Reviewer #2:

1. The paper chose an interesting topic, however, falls short in providing support for the proposed research question. Both prediction and scenarios are not well-justified; without justification, it is overly theoretical and lacking policy implications.

Thank Reviewer #2 for your constructive and professional comments. Inspired by your professional advice, we further complete justification of scenarios in page 13 from 549 to 579 lines. What’s more. a list of other details about scenarios is added in Supplementary Materials as Table 1.

2. The literature review section is not helpful to support answering the research question being proposed. A literature review should be synthesis and analytical beyond purely describing who did what.

Thank Reviewer #2 for your constructive and professional comments. Inspired by your professional advice, we rewrite the literature review which are marked in red and wish to present content that is slightly more optimized than what Reviewer #2 first saw.

3. In addition, the presentation of results should be significantly improved. The authors should distill the key takeaways from the results - this is your findings. Reporting ten digits of numbers do not help interpreting the results.

Thank Reviewer #2 for your constructive and professional comments. Inspired by your professional advice, we condense the key findings of this paper in page 28 from 1210 to 1225 lines.

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Author:

Thank you for submitting your manuscript entitled “The Optimal Path for China to Achieve the "Dual Carbon" Target from the Perspective of Energy Structure Optimization” to Sustainability. After reviewing the manuscript, here are my minor suggestions which can improve the manuscript.

1. Introduction: The introduction is well-written and provides a good overview of the research topic. However, it would be helpful to provide more context on the importance of achieving “Dual Carbon”target and how energy structure can play a role in achieving this goal. Additionally, this part could benefit from a clearer statement of the research question or hypothesis to be addressed in the study.

2. Energy consumption structure forecast. In this part, the author forecasts the energy consumption structure based on three scenarios. But puzzlingly, the part based on the policy-constrained scenario seems incomplete. Please complete this part.

3. Discussion. In this part, the author briefly describes the differences with existing studies, and also discusses the impact of COVID-19. But this section seems too brief to form a separate chapter.

4. Use of English language need slight improvement. There are some grammatical errors and awkward phrasings that could be improved. The author should consider having the paper edited by a professional to ensure clarity and precision in the language used.

5. Article format. There are some font errors and text paste errors in this article. Please note to correct them.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer #3:

1. Introduction: The introduction is well-written and provides a good overview of the research topic. However, it would be helpful to provide more context on the importance of achieving “Dual Carbon” target and how energy structure can play a role in achieving this goal. Additionally, this part could benefit from a clearer statement of the research question or hypothesis to be addressed in the study.

Thank Reviewer #3 for your constructive and professional comments. Inspired by your professional advice, we rewrite the introduction with necessary improvements you mentioned. We have fleshed out the relevant background on the importance of achieving “Dual Carbon” target (in page 1 from 33 to 58 lines; in page 2 from 59 to 82 lines) and relations between energy structure and “Dual Carbon” target (in page 2 from 62 to 134 lines). Then we provide a clearer statement of the research question to be addressed in the study (in page 3 from 113 to 134 lines) and contributions that make our research different from previous studies (in page 3 from 135 to 157 lines).

2. Energy consumption structure forecast. In this part, the author forecasts the energy consumption structure based on three scenarios. But puzzlingly, the part based on the policy-constrained scenario seems incomplete. Please complete this part.

Thank Reviewer #3 for your constructive and professional comments. Inspired by your professional advice, we further complete justification of scenarios in page 13 from 549 to 579 lines. What’s more. a list of other details about scenarios is added in Supplementary Materials as Table 1.

3. Discussion. In this part, the author briefly describes the differences with existing studies, and also discusses the impact of COVID-19. But this section seems too brief to form a separate chapter.

Thank Reviewer #3 for your constructive and professional comments. Inspired by your professional advice, in page 26 from 1071 to 1208, we rewrite and enrich Discussion which are marked in red.

4. Use of English language need slight improvement. There are some grammatical errors and awkward phrasings that could be improved. The author should consider having the paper edited by a professional to ensure clarity and precision in the language used.

Thank Reviewer #3 for your constructive and professional comments. Inspired by your professional advice, we improve grammatical errors of this paper and try our best to ensure clarity and precision in the language used.

5. Article format. There are some font errors and text paste errors in this article. Please note to correct them.

Thank Reviewer #3 for your constructive and professional comments. Inspired by your professional advice, we have corrected the font errors and text paste errors existing in this paper.