Determinants of Investment Costs for CDM Projects in the Energy Industry
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Thank you for the opportunity to review your research. It will provide a contribution to the literature in this area once you have addressed certain observations I have made and provided reasonable revisions derived from those observations. Some specific areas of concern include your choice of multiple linear regression using an abundance of binary response variables, and an obvious lack of connection with the theory and your cluster analysis to justify your hypotheses development. These aspects are required in order to support your methodological approach here.
Author Response
Thank you tor the good comment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Title: Determinants of Investment Costs for CDM Projects in the Energy Industry
Journal: Sustainability
In this manuscript, the authors extracted and databased effective samples for investment analysis from 1,350 Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) project design documents for the energy industry to demonstrate which factors, including renewable energy technology, contribute to changing the investment cost per unit of carbon emissions. The work presented is relevant to the Journal's field. The manuscript has got some potential. I would like to congratulate the author for a considerable amount of work that they have done. Especially, the authors reported that biomass technology has the highest investment efficiency, and the carbon emission issuance price of biomass technologies is lower than that of wind and solar technologies. This manuscript has provided a new case to more comprehensive understanding how market-based emission reduction mechanisms can effectively promote the development of renewable energy. However, the manuscript needs further improved before to be accepted for publication. The reviewer has listed some specific comments that might be helpful of the author to further enhance the quality of the manuscript. Please consider the particular comments listed below.
Comment 1: Abstract. This abstract is well-written. However, it should underscore the scientific value added of your paper in your abstract.
Comment 2: Background of Introduction. As pointed out in the IEA, IPCC, the COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly affected and changed the global and regional carbon emission, energy consumption and others. Therefore, this section should not ignore the impact of the pandemic on carbon emission, energy consumption and others. Please consider citing following paper: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.126265; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.138915; Added these citations will certainly improve the practical significance of the research of this article.
Comment 3. sections of Current status of CDM project in the energy industry sector. This section is well-written and well-organized.
Comment 4: section of Methodology and empirical result. (1) The part of Methodology is well-structured and well-organized.. However, it would be better to further highlight your improvement of the method and your innovation in methods. (2) The part of empirical results is also generally also well-written. However, there is not only a statement of the results, but also in-depth discussion. It would be better to discuss what your findings are different from the past works.
Comment 5: section of conclusion. Please make sure your conclusions' section underscore the scientific value added of your paper, and/or the applicability of your findings/results, as indicated previously. Basically, you should enhance your contributions, limitations, underscore the scientific value added of your paper, and/or the applicability of your findings/results and future study in this session.
Comment 6: There are still some occasional grammar errors through the revised manuscript especially the article ''the'', ''a'' and ''an'' is missing in many places, please make a spellchecking in addition to these minor issues. In addition, some sentences are too long to be easy to read. It is recommended to change to short sentences, which are easier to read.
Comment 7: References. Please check the references in the text and the list; You should update the reference. The line number is missing.
Good luck!
Author Response
Thank you for the good comment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
My concerns from my previous review have been addressed. The authors have addressed most of the concerns I had with the previous review. Thank you.
Author Response
Thank you for the good comment.