Energy Efficiency in Production of Swiftlet Edible Bird’s Nest

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper deals with an analysis about energy efficiency and GHG emissions of swiftlet edible bird’s nest production activities. Case studies in Malaysia were analysed. The paper is interesting, with good elements of novelty, but lacks of clarity in some parts, especially in the definition of inputs. Thus, I suggest some revisions in order to improve the paper. In particular:

1) What area is considered for evaluating quantity or energy per unit of area (Table 1 and others)

2) How is energy for pesticides evaluated? Is it the energy for their production?

3) And what is the energy associated with human labour?

4) Tab.1 output: how is the output energy evaluated? It is not clear.

5) Lines 236-237: “….GHG emission rate is computed by multiplying the emission coefficient by the emission coefficient”???

6) Tab.2: only electricity and pesticides are considered for GHG emissions. And the other input (especially water irrigation)?

7) Fig.4 legend: “Technical Efficiency”, not “Techinal Efficiency”

8) It is not well clear how Tab.1 data are obtained (if they are the benchmark data). Are they not correlated with the Malaysian case studies’ data? Thus, what is the source for Tab.1 data?

9) It is not well clear the definition of inefficient ranches (with respect to ???)

10) Tab.5: are the reported values for “10 most efficient ranches” the average ones? And the same for “inefficient ranches”?

11) Tab.5 output values seems to be not coherent: the value for “inefficient ranches” is lower than the one for “10 most efficient ranches”? Thus, is it characterized by lower energy consumption?

Author Response

Thanks for the comments and suggestion. Kindly find the details reply to the review report in the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

Thank you for submitting the manuscript. The subject matter of the manuscript is intriguing and as an industry, swiftlet edible bird’s nest (EBN) is also a unique one. The study focused on the energy efficiency and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of EBN production. I have the following suggestions:

1. In the abstract, what are the elaboration of CCR and BCC? Please use the elaboration the first time using in the text. 
2. In Table 1, create a reference column for the Energy equivalent column or put the references down as table notes. No need to mention 'Source: Author Estimation'.
3. In the case of units, why did you mix energy units? Make all kWh/TWh or MJ, not both of them. 
4. I am not sure why DEA should be used for this study. Can you please elaborate on the rationale for the use of this methodology? 
5. It's hard to understand the performance/accuracy of the study's DEA outputs. Usually, multiple methods are deployed on the same case study to estimate the accuracy level and comparison. Here it's not clear. Please look into the accuracy/performance criteria. 

Best regards!  

Author Response

Thanks for the comments and suggestion. Kindly find the details reply to the review report in the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors improved the manuscript as suggested