Carbon Footprint Estimation for La Serena-Coquimbo Conurbation Based on Global Protocol for Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Emission Inventories (GPC)
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper is interesting, but some concerns should be addressed:
1. The title of the paper should be revised. It is very unclear. For a reader that, for the first time, sees the title, it is not clear what “La Serena-Coquimbo” is. City? Area? In addition, three different keywords are in the title, transport, waste management, ….. they have been presented in a very unclear way. Transport of the wastes, or regular transport of vehicles in a city? Or…….
2. This claim in the abstract, “Cities are home to over half of the world population and are responsible for generating over 80% of GHG emissions.” is very unclear. Are cities contributing to greenhouse gas generation?
3. In the abstract, please use the full form of CO2eq for the first time.
4. Please add a keyword related to the case study context.
5. Please use appropriate references to support this claim “ High levels of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission, together with the deforestation of native forests and jungles which act as thermal regulators within Earth, have led to a worldwide temperature increase.”
6. Please use appropriate references to support this claim “Increased temperatures result in a cascade of events that have had a negative impact on biodiversity worldwide. “
7. Please use appropriate references to support this claim “Sea ice and glacier melting, sea-level rise acceleration, and increasingly longer and more intense heat waves have impacted ecosystems for a variety of species.”
8. Please be consistent in writing CO2. Somewhere “2” is small, and somewhere “2” is large.
9. Please revise this sentence” According to Moser [9], citizens play a dual role in this scenario.”
10. Please use appropriate references to support this claim “First, that of climate change policy actors, taking action in order to achieve government-level and regulatory change on this aspect; and second, as resource consumers, exercising change by behavioral means for prevention, mitigation and adaptation.”
11. The introduction has many useful claims, but its presentation should be polished. The logic of the presentation is not acceptable, and some claims are presented in the wrong place
(the flow of the introduction is not acceptable).
12. Please review the paper again; in some sections, some acronyms have been presented in full version, for example, in the “Another work was the projections of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the years….”
13. The authors explain the La Serena-Coquimbo in the introduction. It is better to state the case study area in only several sentences in the introduction and then explain it in more detail in material and methods.
14. The quality and the presentation of figure one should be improved.
15. My suggestion is to present the steps on page 5 in a flowchart.
16. Using different bullet points in section 2 makes it a bit awkward.
17. In section 2, the authors didn’t involve the construction industry and its waste generation in the study; and please see and discuss these references: “A synthesis of express analytic hierarchy process (EAHP) and partial least squares-structural equations modeling (PLS-SEM) for sustainable construction and demolition waste management assessment: The case of Malaysia.” Recycling 6.4 (2021): 73. And "The prediction analysis of compressive strength and electrical resistivity of environmentally friendly concrete incorporating natural zeolite using artificial neural network." Construction and Building Materials 317 (2022): 125876.
18. The presentation of figure 2 should be improved.
19. The authors explain different factors that contribute to greenhouse gas, but they didn’t provide good examples for them. For example, transport that is used for some key activities such as waste collection o construction industry is a source of greenhouse gases that I suggest the authors appropriate reference to support them see: "Improving construction and demolition waste collection service in an urban area using a simheuristic approach: A case study in Sydney, Australia." Journal of Cleaner Production
20. In formula one, it seems “x” is not a Multiplication sign.
21. The caption of table 1 should be placed in the correct place. In addition, the presentation of the tale should be improved.
22. The limitations o the study should be discussed in the conclusion.
Author Response
Dear Revier:
In the attached file you will find the response to your comments.
Regards.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
This paper reports the impact of Transport, waste management, and energy generation on CO2 emissions of La Serena-Coquimbo city. The work is important to formulate policies for better sustainability. All of the methods applied for the estimation are reliable and followed the ICC guideline. Before being considered for publication, a few comments below needs to be addressed to enhance the manuscript quality.
Intro Paragraph #6: Please provide a table or a graphical summary of the literature review.
Intro final paragraph may not be required.
Excluded sub-sector: If those items are excluded, the estimation becomes less accurate. The authors can model the items and make predictions based on available raw (secondary data) data.
Section 3 (first paragraph): The data need validation by comparing with other reports. National per capita emission data or data from other cities can be compared.
Results by Sector: graphical information (i.e., pie chart) on the data will ease the reader. It is also recommended to compare the data with the ones obtained in other cities.
Since the emission from electricity generation was excluded, what is its contribution to the overall reported value? It is a bit bizarre to consume electricity without being accountable for emission generation.
Section 3.2: This section will be much more interesting if the strategy and recommendation are equipped with charts and graphical illustrations.
Please revise the formatting and many typo errors (i.e., molecule formula, abbreviations)
Author Response
Dear Reviewer:
In the attached file you will find the response to your comments.
Regards.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The main objective of this manuscript is to estimate the carbon footprint of the La Serena-Coquimbo Conurbation, seeking to determine the contribution of the area to climate change. The paper is meaningful. However, some issues could be improved below.
1. Table 1 should be improved since the text is messy.
2. This paper used the GPC method. So what is the difference with the LCA method? The comparison should be presented in literature.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer:
In the attached file you will find the response to your comments.
Regards.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors addressed almost all comments; however, I still believe the title of the paper is not appropriate. It should be revised. In addition, the authors clearly should address comment number 19.
Author Response
Dear reviewer:
Please find attached the response to your comments and suggestions.
Kind Regards
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors did not address adequately the comments from the previous round. Please carefully re-address comments 1, 2 , 3 ,5 and 7.
Author Response
Dear reviewer:
Please find attached the response to your comments and suggestions.
Kind Regards
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 3
Reviewer 1 Report
Unfortunately, the authors do not respond to the comments properly. The title is still unclear after three revisions. refer to the previous rounds. Other comments have not been adequately addressed.
Author Response
Dear reviewer:
Please find attached the reply to your comment and suggestions.
Kind regards.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
All comments from the previous round have been appropriately addressed.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer:
Thank you so much for your comment and suggestion, we have found them very useful to improve our paper
Kind Regards
This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
line 121: source: the authors, might not be correct
235, 311-312, 347: Error! Reference source not found. Please apply more care!
Figure 4: are these per capita emissions? not marked on the horizontal axis, but only this makes sense, not absolute emissions.
Overall, the exercise of establishing an emission inventory is a "normal administrative task" since many decades and might not deserve a publication in a higly ranking internatinal journal. Please try to submit to more local journals.
Reviewer 2 Report
This paper reports the carbon footprint of La Serena-Coquimbo.
Apart from providing the estimation results, it is hard to find the scientific merit of this work.
therefore, a detailed discussion on the implication of the finding in terms of policy recommendation or technological changes need to be included in the revised manuscript.
In addition, few comments below must also be addressed.
- Overall writing needs to be revised (typo errors, multi-spacing, reference error, etc.)
- Lines 66-75: Please elaborate on the main findings of those cited related references and address the novelty of the present work.
- Section 2 is unnecessarily very long. It can be shortened.
- To allow good analysis and discussion, the sectoral carbon footprint need to be compared with the ones reported for other cities. The carbon footprint profile then needs to be discussed.
- Finally, the quality of Figures 3, 4, 5 and 6, need to be polished.
Reviewer 3 Report
Mám niekoľko poznámok pre autorov:
- odkazy na zdroje literatúry sú v texte v niektorých prípadoch nesprávne (riadky 235, 242 a ďalšie),
- sily v chemických zlúčeninách sú v niektorých prípadoch nesprávne (napr. CO2 riadok 19, 31 a ďalšie, alebo CH4, m3 a ďalšie)
- Jednotky formátu SI odporúčam v príspevku používať rovnakým spôsobom (napr. V rovnici (2): ????/?? a 4,19?10? - 9 a ďalšie)
- Číslovanie rovníc je nesprávne označené (rovnica je tiež označená v riadkoch 234 a 262)
- V tabuľke 2 je hmotnosť stĺpca uvedená s jednotkou v t alebo m 3 . Ktoré hodnoty sú v t a ktoré v m 3 ?
- Rovnica v riadku 263 ukazuje parameter ????, ale pri definovaní významu prvku rovnice sa píše ????? (riadok 264)
- V N 2 O je namiesto písmena O číslo (riadok 295, tabuľka 4 a ďalšie)
-V tabuľke 4 súpisu skleníkových plynov pre La Serena-Coquimbo neuvádza jasné údaje v riadkoch pre každý sub-zdroj vyjadrený celkom (stacionárna energia celkom, doprava celkom, odpad celkom). Sú správne?
