Mapping Bioenergy Supply and Demand in Selected Least Developed Countries (LDCs): Exploratory Assessment of Modern Bioenergy’s Contribution to SDG7

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper is on an important subject. However, the major weakness is the methodology. Below are the major concerns:

There is need to develop a clear theoretical model governing the entire study. This will help readers to see how you move from theory to the empirical models. Likewise, the forecasting models need to be well developed with clear assumptions. It is necessary to understand the theoretical justification of the individual variables that are used in the forecasting models. Line 462. I think it is simplistic to use a simple linear regression model to estimate area and production. Introduce more realistic models so that the results are taken seriously. Agricultural residues are needed to return nutrients to the soil because inorganic fertilizers are beyond the reach of smallholder farmers? What is the opinion of the Ministry of Agriculture on this apparent competition?

Author Response

Thank you so much for your valuable comments on the paper. We have carefully considered the reviewer’s inputs and have made various adjustments in the paper. This has helped to improve clarity and will serve to reach a wider research audience and impact.   Please find attached the authors’ response and clarifications to the reviewer’s comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The reviewed paper presents an interesting study of the energetic situation in the least developed countress, with attempts to find the best solution for improvement. The English language is sufficient, and the article was well written. 

Minor revisions:

Figure quality especially 1, 2 and 6 could be improved
The conclusion section is too long. The main conclusions should be highlighted

Author Response

Thank you so much for your positive remark on the paper. As per the suggestion, the quality of figure 1, 2, and 6 is improved. We have also revised the conclusion, highlighting the main contributions. Furthermore, language is improved. We have also provided a graphical abstract and revised the manuscript. This note provides author’s response and clarifications to the reviewer’s comments (please find attached the document).

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments to the author:

The paper entitled “Mapping Bioenergy Supply and Demand in Selected Least Developed Countries (LDCs): Exploratory Assessment of Modern Bioenergy's Contribution to SDG 7” provide an in-depth analysis of energy provision in a selection of least developed countries within the context of the United Nation Agenda for Sustainable Development, with a particular attention to the exploitation of agricultural byproducts as energy source in order to improve life of rural communities.

The paper is well structured and supported by a wide bibliography; it needs, however, to be improved, mainly regarding the English language, which is sometimes grammatically incorrect or lacking in style of writing. There are even a few formal or conceptual points that should be adjusted or clarified.

The title fits the aim of the work.

The abstract summarizes the main objectives and findings, but it is slightly lacking in style. I invite you to improve it according to the specific comments you find below.

The introduction provides an adequate contextualization of the work, but it is slightly long and patchy. I suggest making it more concise and linear.

The methodology is robust and fitting the aim of the research. There are just two points which need to be better explained. As regards the future demand for electricity (paragraph 3.2), it’s not clear how you chose the growth rate for the projection. In particular it’s not explicitly illustrated whether you relied just on the cited specific literature or you adopted any other method, as done indeed for the estimation of future supply, which is clearly based on a linear projection of past trend. The second point is about the specific biomass consumption for electricity. In this case, you should consider that crop composition of selected countries it’s not similar, moreover, even the same crop grown at different latitude may have different power potential, hence, using a standard value may lead to even substantial errors in estimations. As the limiting factor of such analysis is the lack of data, because it’s hard to find a detailed study for each crop in each part of the world, such methodology is valid to have an overview, but I suggest to illustrate this concept.

Results and discussions are acceptable and properly structured, just I invite you to highlight more the tradeoffs between different aspects of bioenergy development, and the possible conflicts between one another. In this study, you assume that the expansion of agricultural surfaces will keep a linear trend, but it should be underlined that increasing demand for bioenergy may lead to higher competition between agriculture and other possible land use, often less impactful on health and environment. Moreover, the removal of crop residues may result in a depletion of soil organic matter, which has several negative impacts on the environment. In light of this, it would be good to point out that the implementation of bioenergy must be based on rational planning and system efficiency, and it must be seen as an accessory source to an integrated system of energy supply.

Conclusions can be improved with a more fluent writing style and enhancing contents, in light of the above-mentioned comments.

Tables and supplementary material are very useful, complete and clear.

 

Specific comments:

Line 14: I suggest to remove “…and constructive…”.

Line 18: I suggest to change “…Africa that is, Bangladesh…” into “…Africa, namely Bangladesh…”

Lines 22-23:“…and match the corresponding electricity requirements in the LCDs.” Please, try to express the concept in a better way.

Lines 25-27: “…This study… other SDG.” See lines 22-23.

Line 27: I suggest to change “…providing sustainable energy access…” into ““…providing access to sustainable energy…”.

Line 47: Try to avoid double brackets.

Line 48: I suggest to replace “…and expose to…” with “…and they are exposed to…”.

Line 49: How can “population” be considered as an element of vulnerability? It seems to miss something, for instance, an adjective, just to define it better as a criticality.

Line 53: In my opinion comma should be moved before “thereby”, but it can be even omitted.

Line 54: I suggest to put commas before “especially” and after “facilities”.

Lines 61-62: I suggest to remove the list of land-locked countries, as it sounds redundant, otherwise, at least the comma after “…that is,…” should be deleted.

Line 63: I suggest to put commas after bracket and after “density”.

Line 66: I suggest to put comma after the reference number 11.

Line 69: I suggest to change “…Malawi: 72%, Nepal: 70%, Bangladesh: 40%...” into “…72% in Malawi, 70% in Nepal and 40% in Bangladesh…”.

Lines 88-90: First of all I suggest to replace “This primary objective…” with “The primary objective…”, than, I think that the period is too long, so, not easily readable. In particular, though the concept is clear, I miss the subject of “…and match…”. Please, try to improve form.

Line 95: I suggest to replace “…How can the enabling environment be created…” with “How to create an enabling environment…”.

Lines 97-99: Please, try to express the concept in a better way. In particular, use more suitable terms, for instance “knowledge contribution” instead of “lessons”.

Line 102: “among others” is not suitable, I suggest to use “etcetera” or “etc.”.

Line 103: I suggest to separate the list with a point instead the semicolon.

Line 104: Correct “access of” into “access to”.

Line 106: I suggest to change “by” with “up to”, as “by” implicate a deadline.

Lines 111-112: First I suggest to change the second comma into “and”, then, try to improve the final sentence, I suggest something like “Finally, concluding remarks are made in order to find a way forward to achieve the SDG7 in the selected LDCs.”.

Lines 122-123: Specify if percentages refer to a yearly rate (as I think, in such case I suggest the formula “…from a yearly rate of +X%...”) or any other reference period.

Lines 195-196: I suggest to omit “…area (of the land area)” simply saying “…% of forest land”

Line 197: “major” and “dominant” are synonym, so, choose which of the two you want keep.

Lines 199-200: It’s not correct to begin a sentence with “of”, please, replace “Of the total…” with “Among the total…”.

Liner 218-219: The expression “…pose threats to deforestation.” is not logically correct, as the use of fuelwood rather promotes deforestation. At most you can say that it is a threat to forest.

Line 223: I suggest to say “job” instead of “jobs”.

Line 228: The concept is not clear.

Lines 231-232: “We assume… rural areas.” The concept is not clear: who would like to promote locally produced bioelectricity? Government or people? I would say that public incentives can be useful in promoting national energy. If you want to mean this, well, try to explain it better.

Line 235: I suggest to replace “(Status and progress)” with “(state of art and perspectives)”, and “by” with “of”.

Line 236: I suggest to replace “end” with “fight”.

Line 237: Change “quality education” into “education quality”, than I suggest to replace “addressing” with “mitigating”.

Line 238: I suggest to delete “our”. Please, refer to line 102 as regards “Among other objectives”.

Line 240: There’s a missing point (.) after “indicators”.

Line 242: I suggest to replace “…an enabler for…” with “…strictly related with…”, than, move comma before “notably”.

Line 244: refer to line 102.

Lines 247-248: Objectives of SDG7 are clear by now, so you can avoid to repeat “ensuring access… for all”.

Line 249: I would delete comma.

Line 250: I would delete “to”, than I suggest to replace “…drop the…” with “…drop of the…”.

Lines 253: I suggest to change “…97% urban population…” into “…97% of urban population…”.

Lines 274-277: The concept has been already expressed and it can be considered as granted by now. It can be omitted.

Lines 278: It’s better to avoid using to consecutive adverbs, so I suggest to change “Globally” into “On a global scale”.

Lines 281-282: There are a point more (.1.2) and a missing bracket.

Line 286: Take out “In”, otherwise the sentence is grammatically incorrect.

Line 303: I suggest to change “large” into “largely”.

Line 306: “While” coordinates two sentences in the same period, so I suggest to change the point into comma, or at least to use “Finally” instead of “While”.

Line 315: Remove “from”, it is not necessary since it is preceded by “through”.

Line 317: The sentence “When it comes to the total sectoral retail electricity consumption…” is slightly hard to read, I suggest to replace it with “As regards sectorial electricity consumption…”.

Line 322: Insert “for” before “86%” and “came” before “from”.

Line 336: “…including the peak demand” it is not clear. Probably you wanted to mean that there was a peak demand. If it’s like this, I suggest to improve the sentence.

Lines 344-345: “In Malawi… in 2014”, the concept is quite clear but the sentence has got some mistakes, please, try to improve it.

Line 362: I suggest to replace “For” with “In order to”.

Lines 345-409: You say that there are limited studies/report about future scenarios of electricity demand in Malawi, but then you provide a quite long list of projection for Malawi, as you didn’t do for previous countries. Are you sure studies are so limited?

Line 412: I suggest to replace “…as high as that…” “…higher than that…”.

Line 436: I suggest to remove comma after “respectively”.

Line 506: Try to avoid the repetition of words with same root, in this case “estimate” and “estimated”.

552: In that section you don’t mention any scenario, so, why did you choose this title?

Line 566: According to table 4 the value should be around 110% (118% is related to the year 2015).

Lines 586-589: There’s a conceptual mistake. According to your calculations (table 7) the potential annual demand of electricity would be systematically lower than the potential supply from agricultural residues, therefore bioelectricity may potentially electrify 100% of households in each studied country, at least for the year 2017. What you called “share of bioelectricity” is actually the potential absorption of bioelectricity from households. Moreover, in this section you want to analyze the potential needs of rural population, but you made your calculations on the total population of the country (compare table 7 with table 2). Finally, I point out that population of Bangladesh reported in table 7 is different than the one in table 2, respectively 157.97 and 159.97 million people.

Line 592: Change “As mentioned previously…” in “As previously mentioned…” or “As mentioned above…”.

Line 593-594: I suggest to change “Examples of how …to SDG13…” into “The role of bioenergy in SDGs affect SDG7 (increase share of RE), SDG13…”.

Line 596: I suggest to change “creations” into “creation”.

Line 619: See line 592.

Line 637: I suggest to remove comma.

Line 645: I suggest to change “loading” into “load”.

Line 654: Remove “was”.

Line 658: I suggest to change “diversity” into “diversify”.

Line 659: I suggest to change “…for meeting…” into “…in order to meet…”.

Line 261: Change “2-time” into “2 times”.

Line 664: I suggest to omit “in Malawi”.

Lines 665-668: I cannot understand the connection between time slots of peak demand and bioelectricity. I would omit these few lines.

Line 683: Change “stagnated” into “stagnating”.

Line 713: I suggest to replace “while” with “by”.

Line 723: I suggest to replace the first “and” with comma.

Line 738: I suggest to change “systems” into “system”.

Author Response

Thank you for your positive remark on the paper. As per the suggestion, we have revised the manuscripts along the lines as suggested by reviewers. We have carefully considered the reviewer’s inputs and have made various adjustments in the paper. This has helped to improve clarity and will serve to reach a wider research audience and impact.
This note provides authors’ response and clarifications to the reviewer’s comments. The revision is carried out as per the attached review document.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Specific comments:

Line 113: Change “acheiving” into “achieve”.

Line 124: It’s still missing “yearly” or “per year”, otherwise, for instance, I understand that population of Zambia has grown by 2.75% in twenty years, at contrary I think it has been growing by 2.75% per year during the last two decades.

Lines 201: I suggest to change the sentence into “…whereas Malawi has a gigantic share of…”.

Line 255: I would delete “to”, than I suggest to replace “…drop the…” with “…drop of the…”.

Line 379: Delete “as”.

Line 609: I suggest to change “…is key…” into “…is a key…”

Line 610: Delete “which”, otherwise the sentence remains unfinished.

Lines 646-647: I suggest to change “…has the potential positively impacts on the delivery of the SDGs…” into “…has a potential positive impact on the fulfilment of the SDGs…”.

Lines 720-722: I still don’t understand how can hours be connected with bioelectricity. I mean that bioelectricity can provide the base load in any time of the day, so, it is obvious that it can do it even when the peak demand is higher. Is there any reason that I miss?

Author Response

The authors would like to thank you for reviewing and providing suggestions to further improve the manuscript. We have carefully considered the reviewer’s inputs and have made various adjustments in the paper.

 

This note provides authors’ response and clarifications to the reviewer’s comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf