Revisiting the Relation between Renewable Electricity and Economic Growth: A Renewable–Growth Hypothesis

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This manuscript investigates possible correlation between Renewable Electricity production (in the form of PV and Wind Power) and Economic Growth in several countries. Since economic growth is a very complex index affected by a multitude of economic parameters, it is questionable if the search for such a correlation with only renewable energy production would be of any usefulness and meaning.

The Granger causality test is employed in this investigation.

However, the authors do not seem to understand the underlying statement about causality in Granger’s theory. It has just two components:

1. The cause occurs before the effect; and
2. The cause contains information about the effect that that is unique, and is in no other variable.

Besides, the manuscript needs much improvement in its presentation of the statistical analysis and the discussion of the results.

Line 56 reference [11] is somewhat outdated, since it is from 2017 and predicts the situation of 2020 (today).

Line 128-129 “The economic growth Granger causes electricity consumption in both countries” This sentence does not make sense: please rephrase to convey the correct meaning.

Line 372 and beyond: Results of the Granger Causality tests: These results need more analysis.

Line 474-475 “The analysis showed that the renewable-growth hypothesis was satisfied except in some countries”. This is a vague statement. You should clearly state for which countries the “renewables – growth” hypothesis is not satisfied.

English language needs much improvement throughout the text.

 

Author Response

This manuscript investigates possible correlation between Renewable Electricity production (in the form of PV and Wind Power) and Economic Growth in several countries. Since economic growth is a very complex index affected by a multitude of economic parameters, it is questionable if the search for such a correlation with only renewable energy production would be of any usefulness and meaning.

The Granger causality test is employed in this investigation.

However, the authors do not seem to understand the underlying statement about causality in Granger’s theory. It has just two components:
1. The cause occurs before the effect; and
2. The cause contains information about the effect that that is unique, and is in no other variable.

Besides, the manuscript needs much improvement in its presentation of the statistical analysis and the discussion of the results.

(Response) Thank you for the thoughtful comment. Yes, we know the economic meaning and the limitations of Granger causality. The Granger causality does not guarantee actual economic causation between variables. However, despite the limitations, the Granger causality analysis could be a useful method to figure out the relationship between economic growth and energy use if it is supported by production theory. That’s why a vast number (1,000+) of the energy-growth nexus studies have been published in various journals, including high-quality ones. We’ve tried to propose a new hypothesis following the formulation and estimation strategy of the previous studies. Please reconsider the meaning of the energy-growth nexus analysis.

Line 56 reference [11] is somewhat outdated, since it is from 2017 and predicts the situation of 2020 (today).

(Response) Fair point. We tried to find out an up-to-date reference, which handled both value-added and employment of solar PV, but EY’s 2017 report was the only one we were able to find. The other recent articles have discussed one side – value-added or employment. We revised the sentences in lines 57-59 to make it clear. It will be very appreciated if you suggest a more proper, the latest reference.

Line 128-129 “The economic growth Granger causes electricity consumption in both countries” This sentence does not make sense: please rephrase to convey the correct meaning.

(Response) If you pointed out the expression of “A Granger causes B,” this is a widely used expression in the energy-growth nexus study. We slightly revised the sentence to show the direction of causality clearer.

Line 372 and beyond: Results of the Granger Causality tests: These results need more analysis.

(Response) We respectfully disagree. As we mentioned above, we followed a typical process of the energy-growth nexus research and presented all relevant statistics. If we’re missing some points that you originally meant, please tell us one more time.

Line 474-475 “The analysis showed that the renewable-growth hypothesis was satisfied except in some countries”. This is a vague statement. You should clearly state for which countries the “renewables – growth” hypothesis is not satisfied.

(Response) Good point. We specified the countries not satisfied the hypothesis following your comment. Also, we added the description of which model contained the exception.

English language needs much improvement throughout the text.

(Response) We admit that there were several ambiguous sentences in the manuscript. We reviewed one more time and tried to make them explicit. Our paper was proofread by an English professional editor in Editage by CACTUS. We attached the certificate of English editing.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

 

The article is sufficient and well structured, even the introduction correctly contextualizes the study presented in this paper; finally the bibliography is adequate and satisfactory.
The work should in any case be reviewed by the authors, the reasons for this are given below.
The abstract is not particularly clear, it often repeats similar topics. The abstract should make it clearer which stages of evaluation are followed within the text.
The energy policies of a nation are closely related to politics and government. In some countries, such as China, the government's weight on energy planning may be predominant and violate physical and mathematical rules. No political variables have been included in the assessment to take into account possible deviations that could arise. It would be interesting to look more closely at the presence of such variables in the work. Even if you do not want to consider these connections, it would be appropriate to specify which assumptions and boundary conditions make this work valid.

 

Author Response

The article is sufficient and well structured, even the introduction correctly contextualizes the study presented in this paper; finally the bibliography is adequate and satisfactory.
The work should in any case be reviewed by the authors, the reasons for this are given below.
The abstract is not particularly clear, it often repeats similar topics. The abstract should make it clearer which stages of evaluation are followed within the text.
The energy policies of a nation are closely related to politics and government. In some countries, such as China, the government's weight on energy planning may be predominant and violate physical and mathematical rules. No political variables have been included in the assessment to take into account possible deviations that could arise. It would be interesting to look more closely at the presence of such variables in the work. Even if you do not want to consider these connections, it would be appropriate to specify which assumptions and boundary conditions make this work valid.

(Response) We appreciate you taking the time to read our manuscript and have benefitted from your comments.

For the abstract, we have removed a repeated sentence in lines 12-13 and described the testing method in line 18.

The consideration of political variables in the model is a good suggestion. We agree with the necessity, but it’ll be challenging work. We thought that it would be better to test the renewable-growth hypothesis, a new one, with broadly accepted variables. Then, the expansion of our hypothesis with the other variables, such as political stability, could be the next step. That’s why we used a basic KLE formulation for our analysis.

Following your comments, we specified the boundary conditions of our work in the Discussion. Please let us know if it is necessary to cite some articles considering the political variables in the energy-growth nexus. We were able to find out valuable studies such as Menegaki and Ozturk (2013) and Adams et al. (2016), both in Energy Policy.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

You m ay proceed with publication

Reviewer 2 Report

Some small changes have been introduced to the abstract trying to better explain the research procedure that is followed. This is simply in response to what was asked to the authors during the first round of this revision.

Some small additions have also been applied to the considerations made about the weight of politics in this study. The variables on which the effects of policy are weighted, with their limits, have not been added, modified or indicated, as was recommended to make the work more coplete. In some cases explicative references have been mentioned. In a simplistic way it is noted that only the questions asked have been answered but without any improvements or additions to this work.

Even if what has been done is minimal, the work is barely sufficient.