Clean Development, Energy Substitution, and Carbon Emissions: Evidence from Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) Project Implementation in China
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Given below are my comments to improvise upon the quality of the manuscript:
- Please fix the resolution of fig 1 and fig 2. Both of them look distraught at the moment.
- What are the units of the CO2 emissions in Fig 1 and fig 2? Kindly add.
- What was the result of the sudden drop in the numbers of CDM project in China and elsewhere from 2012 to 2013?
- Please discuss the units of all the quantities used in the equations.
- How is the Carbon emission coefficient calculated? (eq 3). You can perhaps refer to the below paper where the authors have developed similar equations to calculate the CO2 emissions. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-15-8131-1_31
- How did you calculate the constant values (0.7329, 0.5574 and 0.4226) in eq 4?
- Line 255-256: Why GDP growth had no significant impact on the regional CO2 emissions?
- How can this study be adapted and applied to other countries?
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you for your time and effort to read this paper named “Clean Development, Energy Substitution, and Carbon Emissions: Evidence from Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) Project Implementation in China”. And thank you very much for your valuable review suggestions. Your constructive review comments are very important for us to further revise and improve. We revised it carefully in accordance with your suggestions. After revision, the quality of the paper has been further improved, and once again thank you for the painstaking review.
The revision report is presented below one by one, and the revised contents are also highlighted in red in the manuscript, please review again, and criticize and advise.
Please see the attachment for the revised manuscript and the report.
Thank you very much.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Summary
This study the interaction of substitution and reduction effect from cooperative and non-cooperative projects under Clean Development Mechanism, suggesting that China should continue its trend to implement CDM projects to curb the total emission and its growth.
Comments [Lines]
[17, 79, etc.] per unit “of” gross domestic product (GDP).
[22 – 24] Unconventional to mention conclusions in the abstract.
[60] I don’t see how “effectively curbed” it is. Use “slowed down” instead.
[72] “the” statistics, and please specifically relate to the source of statistics that you use.
[80 – 84] Don’t directly copy your sentences to the abstract; consider paraphrasing.
[89] are “attributed” to
[173] Do you mean “distributed with uniformity” to be “evenly distributed”?
[Eq 1] Do you take natural algorithm of the dependent variable, carbon dioxide emission?
[186] What distribution does the error term follow?
[188] Rewrite “cooperation ways” as “ways of cooperation”, to be more formal.
[189 – 190] Remove “the” before model (2).
[Eq 2] Instead of CDM_projecttype_it, I would consider three variables, CDM_project_it to be the number of CDM projects, as in line 184, CDM_projecttype_it to be a categorical variable denoting the type of project, and an interaction term, CDM_project_it x CDM_projecttype_it.
[201 – 202] You need a theoretical basis to substantiate your use of (indirect) indicators, not because of a lack of direct data, but from the literature how it has been empirically validated.
[209] Spell out DOE in full.
[222] What is your base year of GDP adjustment?
[255 – 258] If this is the case, why don’t you regress GDP based on primary, secondary, and tertiary industries? This may provide additional insights to validate your hypothesis.
[264] It’s rare to say “reinforce” here; use “investigate” or “validate” instead.
[265] projects’ implementation.
[289] If you investigate long-term effect, why don’t you include autocorrelated variables?
[306 – 307] Do you have any basis to support your claim of “strong enterprising nature”?
[311 – 315] To make your results more robust, you may regress on each of 9 types separately.
[329] slowing “down” the growth of
[335] Leave “unclear mechanism” to future research, rather than the drawback of your model.
[346] Provide in-text citation.
[378 – 380] Do you mean the project itself is consuming more energy than it conserves? Then, this is a big problem which you need to address. If this is not the case, please rewrite.
[381 – 385] I think this is purely wishful thinking, unless you perform rigorous scenario analysis.
[432] “own appropriate ways” not well defined.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you for your time and effort to read this paper named “Clean Development, Energy Substitution, and Carbon Emissions: Evidence from Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) Project Implementation in China”. And thank you very much for your valuable review suggestions. Your constructive review comments are very important for us to further revise and improve. We revised it carefully in accordance with your suggestions. After revision, the quality of the paper has been further improved, and once again thank you for the painstaking review.
The revision report is presented below one by one, and the revised contents are also highlighted in red in the manuscript, please review again, and criticize and advise.
Please see the attachment for the revised manuscript and the report.
Thank you very much.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The emission reduction effects of different types of CDM projects have obvious
heterogeneity. Among them, non-cooperative CDM and new-energy projects have greater reduction effects. In addition, mechanism exploration found that carbon emission-reduction effects are achieved by substituting traditional fossil energy, that is, significantly reducing the total consumption of natural gas, crude oil, and coal.
Where is the comparisons with previous or similar works ?
There is no comparison section related to the logical coherence of the results.
I recommend also to reconsider the figures quality.
Moderate english changes are required.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you for your time and effort to read this paper named “Clean Development, Energy Substitution, and Carbon Emissions: Evidence from Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) Project Implementation in China”. And thank you very much for your valuable review suggestions. Your constructive review comments are very important for us to further revise and improve. We revised it carefully in accordance with your suggestions. After revision, the quality of the paper has been further improved, and once again thank you for the painstaking review.
The revision report is presented below one by one, and the revised contents are also highlighted in red in the manuscript, please review again, and criticize and advise.
Please see the attachment for the revised manuscript and the report.
Thank you very much.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Thank you for providing a response to my comments and revising the manuscript accordingly.
Reviewer 3 Report
After taking into account the corrections that I recommended to the authors. The modifications have been approved which has changed the quality of the paper.
