The Race to Zero Emissions in MINT Economies: Can Economic Growth, Renewable Energy and Disintegrated Trade Be the Path to Carbon Neutrality?

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper uses a new Granger causality test, the bootstrap Fourier Granger causality in quantiles test (BFGC-Q), to test for Granger causality between consumption-based emissions (CCO2) and IMP, EXP, FD and REC in the MINT countries from 1990Q1 to 2019Q4.

My main comment is that the paper establishes Granger causality using the new BFGC-Q test between CCO2 and the other variables without conducting a cointegration analysis. Although, the existence of cointegration among variables establishes Granger causality (without revealing the direction of granger causality -and this is why Granger causality test is required after the cointegration analysis-) the existence of Granger causality does not establish cointegration by itself. Therefore, the inclusion of cointegration analysis will strengthen the results of the paper considerably, especially if they are to be used for economic policy recommendations.

Other comments:

Unit root test results are presented in Table 3; I(1) variables are in their normal values not in logs. However, in Figures 5 to 7 some times EXP, IMP etc. are in logs and some other times in their normal values.  Why did this discrepancy occur? 

Please explain how the quantiles are selected for conducting the BFGC-Q test.

 

Author Response

My main comment is that the paper establishes Granger causality using the new BFGC-Q test between CCO2 and the other variables without conducting a cointegration analysis. Although, the existence of cointegration among variables establishes Granger causality (without revealing the direction of granger causality -and this is why Granger causality test is required after the cointegration analysis-) the existence of Granger causality does not establish cointegration by itself. Therefore, the inclusion of cointegration analysis will strengthen the results of the paper considerably, especially if they are to be used for economic policy recommendations.

Response: Thank you for this suggestion. As suggested, we have incorporated the cointegration results.

Other comments:

Unit root test results are presented in Table 3; I(1) variables are in their normal values not in logs. However, in Figures 5 to 7 some times EXP, IMP etc. are in logs and some other times in their normal values.  Why did this discrepancy occur? 

Response: Thank you for this suggestion. As suggested, we have changed all these discrepancies. We log the variables used in this study.

Please explain how the quantiles are selected for conducting the BFGC-Q test.

Response: Thank you for this suggestion. As suggested, we select the quantiles in line with the study of study of cheng et al. (2021) and Fareed et al. (2021) who are the pioneers of the BFGC-Q test.

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

I have reviewed the manuscript "The race to zero emissions in MINT Economies: Can Economic Growth, Renewable Energy and Disintegrated Trade be the path to carbon neutrality?", Manuscript number: sustainability-1979417 that has been submitted for publication in the MDPI journal Sustainability, and I have identified a series of aspects that, in my opinion, must be addressed in order to bring a benefit to the manuscript.

In this article, the authors apply the novel Bootstrap Fourier Granger causality in quantiles (BFGC-Q) to explore the role of disintegrated trade, financial development and renewable energy on consumption-based carbon emissions (CCO2) in MINT (Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey) nations between 1990Q1 and 2019Q4

The article under review will be improved if the authors address the following aspects in the text of the manuscript:

Ø Comments concerning the "Abstract" section of the paper:

·       The authors should improve the structuration of their abstract. They should not lose sight of the fact that a well-written abstract summarizes, usually in one paragraph of 300 words or less, the major aspects of the entire paper in a prescribed sequence that includes: 1) the overall purpose of the study and the research problem(s) you investigated; 2) the basic design of the study; 3) major findings or trends found as a result of your analysis; and, 4) a brief summary of your interpretations and conclusions.

·       I suggest authors the author the following as a starting point towards improving their abstract:

o   “ Global greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity loss are both threats to the sustainability of the environment. Therefore, a significant challenge for emerging economies is attaining greener growth and sustainable production. The current paper utilizes the novel Bootstrap Fourier Granger causality in quantiles (BFGC-Q) to evaluate the role of disintegrated trade, financial development and renewable energy on consumption-based carbon emissions (CCO2) in MINT (Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey)  nations between 1990Q1 and 2019Q4. The outcomes uncover a unidirectional causality from economic growth and renewable energy to CCO2 emissions in each MINT nation. Also, a unidirectional causality emerged from financial development to CCO2 for Indonesia, Nigeria, and Turkiye. Exports have predictive power over CCO2 in Mexico, Indonesia, and Turkey, while imports only have predictive power over CCO2 emissions in Turkiye. Lastly, financial development causes CCO2 in Mexico, Indonesia, and Nigeria. These results concluded that green energy and exports are essential factors that decrease CCO2 emissions and therefore decrease ecological deterioration in Mexico, Indonesia and Turkiye. On the flip, imports only trigger CCO2 emissions in Turkiye and Mexico. Lastly, the financial development effect on CCO2 emissions is positive in Mexico, Indonesia, and Nigeria, while an insignificant impact was found in Turkey. Based on these findings, policy ramifications were initiated.”

Ø Comments regarding the Structuration of the paper

·       The authors did not number the sections in their paper, worse, the numbering of subsections are inappropriate. I recommend to the authors to number the sections, sub sections and sub-subsections appropriately. The following is a suggestion:

§  1. Introduction

§  2. Litterature Review

§  2.1. Synopsis of Studies Between Environmental Quality and Financial Development, and Renewable Energy

§  2.2. Synopsis of Studies Between Environmental Quality and Exports and Imports

§  3. Data and Methodology

§  3.1. Data

§  3.2. Methodology

§  4. Empirical Results

§  4.1. Stationarity Test Results

§  4.2. Fourier Test Results

§  4.3. Fourier Quantile Causality Results

§  5. Conclusion and Policy Ramifications

§  5.1. Conclusion

§  5.2. Policy Ramifications

Ø Comments regarding the citation in the paper

Authors should pay attention on citation in the paper, especially multiple citations and make sure that they meet MDPI citation style requirements. For examples, “[1], [2]” should be replaced by “[1, 2]”; “[3], [4]” by “[3, 4]”; “[15]–[17]” by “[15-17]”; “[8], [22], [23], [24] and [25]” by “[8, 22-25]”. The similar correction should be done throughout the text. Generally, I encourage the authors to use a citation software such as Zotero.

 

Ø Comments regarding the “Introduction” and “literature review” sections

·       In a scientific article, an important role of the “Introduction” and “litterature” sections are to offer authors the opportunity to analyze in detail the current state of knowledge related to the manuscript’s topic, namely the most relevant scientific works in the field in order to be able to contextualize their study and familiarize the readers with what has been done in the literature and what advancement their study aims to bring in addition to the existing body of knowledge.  

·       The authors managed to highlight some limitations of the referenced articles and state the need for their work by presenting it as an opposition between what the scientific community currently has and what it needs or wants.  Then, they indicated what they have done in their conducted study to address the existing need, namely the task they set out to solve. Unfortunately, they failed to correctly preview the remainder of the paper to prepare the readers for the subsequent structuring of the manuscript at the end of the “introduction”.

·       As an suggestion, the authors can improve the sentence at the end of the introduction to preview the remainder of the paper as follow: “The reminder of this article is organized as follows: Section 3 presents a synopsis of relevant investigations. The data and methodology adopted to carry out the study are illustrated in Section 4. The empirical results obtained and are presented in Section 4. The Conclusion and Policy Ramifications end the paper in Section 5.”

Ø Comments concerning the " Data and Methodology" section:

·        In order to bring a benefit to the manuscript, the authors should mention early in the "Data and Methodology" section, preferably in the first sentence, the choices they have made in their experimental study. The authors should state what has justified using the given method, what is special, unexpected, or different in their approach. If the authors make use of a standard or usual procedure, this aspect should also be mentioned upfront, from the very beginning. I consider that the manuscript under review will benefit if the authors make all of these aspects as clear as possible to the readers starting from the first sentence of the paragraph in order to give them a clear idea of what the entire paragraph is about.

·       In the "Data and Methodology" section the new developed methods should be described in detail while well-established methods (and information) can be briefly described and appropriately cited.

·       In the actual form of the paper, the "Data and Methodology" section contains some explanation on the methodology used. I consider that in addition to the actual explanations, in order to help the readers better understand the methodology of the conducted research, the authors should devise a flowchart within the "Data and Methodology" section, a flowchart that depicts the steps that the authors have processed in developing their research and most important of all, the final target. This flowchart will facilitate the understanding of the proposed approach and in the same time will make the article more interesting to the readers if used as a graphical abstract.

·       It will benefit the paper if the authors provide more details regarding the hardware (CPU, DRAM, GPU etc.) and software configurations (Operating System Version etc.) of the platform used to obtain the results in order to assure the reproducibility of the conducted study.

·       All the equations within the manuscript should be numbered. In the actual form of the manuscript, all of the equations are not numbered so it is difficult to refer them.

·        All the equations within the manuscript should be explained, demonstrated and cited, as there are some equations that have not been introduced in the literature for the first time by the authors and that are not cited.

·       The authors should provide a more detailed explanation of how they came up with these equations by citing the appropriate sources from the literature.

·       Not all the notations within the equations are explained. Please revise the mathematical formalism of all the equations, the notations and their significance.

Ø Comments concerning the "Results and Discussion" section:

·       The results presented in this section should provide a concise and precise description of the experimental results, their interpretation as well as the experimental conclusions that can be drawn.

·        The authors must assume more clearly their own results and their own original contributions to the current state of knowledge.

·       After having analyzed the results, the authors should move forward to the discussions within which the authors must extend the comparison between their developed strategy from the manuscript and other strategies that have been designed and used in the literature for this purpose.

·       There are a lot of valuable studies in the scientific literature related to the subject of the manuscript to which the authors can compare, and this comparison will highlight even more the novel aspects that their paper brought in contrast to the existing studies. Consequently, to validate the usefulness of their research, within the discussion part of this section, the authors should compare their method from the manuscript and other ones that have been developed and used in the literature for the same purpose.

·       I consider that the manuscript will be considerably improved if the authors state clearly within the manuscript who are the potential beneficiaries of the devised approach (proving once again the usefulness of the conducted study) and how will these potential beneficiaries be able to make use of the devised approach in their everyday activities. Are there any special constraints (material, ethical, financial or any other types) that have to be taken into account when employing the devised approach in a real case everyday use scenario?

 

Ø Comments concerning the "conclusion and policy ramifications" section:

·       The “conclusions” at its current state should be entirely revised

·       The authors should avoid simply summarizing the aspects that they have already stated in the body of the manuscript. Instead, they should interpret their findings at a higher level of abstraction than in the Discussion section. The authors should highlight whether, or to what extent they have managed to address the necessity identified within the Introduction section. The authors should avoid restating everything they did once again, but instead they should emphasize what their findings mean to the readers, therefore making the Conclusions section exciting and memorable to them.

·        The authors should write a short Conclusions section, in fact they should conclude in just a few sentences given the rich discussion section that they will have devised in the body of the paper. I strongly recommend the authors to overcome the temptation to repeat material from the Introduction or from the rest of the paper only to make the Conclusions section longer under the false belief that a longer Conclusions section will seem more impressive.

 

 

Author Response

Ø Comments concerning the "Abstract" section of the paper:

• The authors should improve the structuration of their abstract. They should not lose sight of the fact that a well-written abstract summarizes, usually in one paragraph of 300 words or less, the major aspects of the entire paper in a prescribed sequence that includes: 1) the overall purpose of the study and the research problem(s) you investigated; 2) the basic design of the study; 3) major findings or trends found as a result of your analysis; and, 4) a brief summary of your interpretations and conclusions.
• I suggest authors the author the following as a starting point towards improving their abstract:

o   “ Global greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity loss are both threats to the sustainability of the environment. Therefore, a significant challenge for emerging economies is attaining greener growth and sustainable production. The current paper utilizes the novel Bootstrap Fourier Granger causality in quantiles (BFGC-Q) to evaluate the role of disintegrated trade, financial development and renewable energy on consumption-based carbon emissions (CCO2) in MINT (Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey)  nations between 1990Q1 and 2019Q4. The outcomes uncover a unidirectional causality from economic growth and renewable energy to CCO2 emissions in each MINT nation. Also, a unidirectional causality emerged from financial development to CCO2 for Indonesia, Nigeria, and Turkiye. Exports have predictive power over CCO2 in Mexico, Indonesia, and Turkey, while imports only have predictive power over CCO2 emissions in Turkiye. Lastly, financial development causes CCO2 in Mexico, Indonesia, and Nigeria. These results concluded that green energy and exports are essential factors that decrease CCO2 emissions and therefore decrease ecological deterioration in Mexico, Indonesia and Turkiye. On the flip, imports only trigger CCO2 emissions in Turkiye and Mexico. Lastly, the financial development effect on CCO2 emissions is positive in Mexico, Indonesia, and Nigeria, while an insignificant impact was found in Turkey. Based on these findings, policy ramifications were initiated.”

Response: Thank you for this suggestion. As suggested, we have restructured the abstract

Ø Comments regarding the Structuration of the paper

• The authors did not number the sections in their paper, worse, the numbering of subsections are inappropriate. I recommend to the authors to number the sections, sub sections and sub-subsections appropriately. The following is a suggestion:
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Litterature Review
• 2.1. Synopsis of Studies Between Environmental Quality and Financial Development, and Renewable Energy
• 2.2. Synopsis of Studies Between Environmental Quality and Exports and Imports
• 3. Data and Methodology
• 3.1. Data
• 3.2. Methodology
• 4. Empirical Results
• 4.1. Stationarity Test Results
• 4.2. Fourier Test Results
• 4.3. Fourier Quantile Causality Results
• 5. Conclusion and Policy Ramifications
• 5.1. Conclusion
• 5.2. Policy Ramifications

Response: Thank you for this suggestion. As suggested, we have followed the above suggestions

Ø Comments regarding the citation in the paper

Authors should pay attention on citation in the paper, especially multiple citations and make sure that they meet MDPI citation style requirements. For examples, “[1], [2]” should be replaced by “[1, 2]”; “[3], [4]” by “[3, 4]”; “[15]–[17]” by “[15-17]”; “[8], [22], [23], [24] and [25]” by “[8, 22-25]”. The similar correction should be done throughout the text. Generally, I encourage the authors to use a citation software such as Zotero.

Response: Thank you for this suggestion. As suggested, we have used Zotero referencing style

Ø Comments regarding the “Introduction” and “literature review” sections

• In a scientific article, an important role of the “Introduction” and “litterature” sections are to offer authors the opportunity to analyze in detail the current state of knowledge related to the manuscript’s topic, namely the most relevant scientific works in the field in order to be able to contextualize their study and familiarize the readers with what has been done in the literature and what advancement their study aims to bring in addition to the existing body of knowledge.  
• The authors managed to highlight some limitations of the referenced articles and state the need for their work by presenting it as an opposition between what the scientific community currently has and what it needs or wants.  Then, they indicated what they have done in their conducted study to address the existing need, namely the task they set out to solve. Unfortunately, they failed to correctly preview the remainder of the paper to prepare the readers for the subsequent structuring of the manuscript at the end of the “introduction”.
• As an suggestion, the authors can improve the sentence at the end of the introduction to preview the remainder of the paper as follow: “The reminder of this article is organized as follows: Section 3 presents a synopsis of relevant investigations. The data and methodology adopted to carry out the study are illustrated in Section 4. The empirical results obtained and are presented in Section 4. The Conclusion and Policy Ramifications end the paper in Section 5.”

Response: Thank you for this suggestion. The remaining sections are incorporated in the paper which is as follows: A synopsis of relevant investigations is presented in the next part, and then section 3 contains the data and methodology. In Section 4, study results and analyses are reported, and Section 5 brings the research to a close.

 

Ø Comments concerning the " Data and Methodology" section:

• In order to bring a benefit to the manuscript, the authors should mention early in the "Data and Methodology" section, preferably in the first sentence, the choices they have made in their experimental study. The authors should state what has justified using the given method, what is special, unexpected, or different in their approach. If the authors make use of a standard or usual procedure, this aspect should also be mentioned upfront, from the very beginning. I consider that the manuscript under review will benefit if the authors make all of these aspects as clear as possible to the readers starting from the first sentence of the paragraph in order to give them a clear idea of what the entire paragraph is about.

Response: Thank you for this suggestion. We have added the reason for using this technique towards the end of the introduction section.

• In the "Data and Methodology" section the new developed methods should be described in detail while well-established methods (and information) can be briefly described and appropriately cited.

Response: Thank you for this suggestion. However, we have properly explain in detail the methodology employed. Kindly see methodology section

• In the actual form of the paper, the "Data and Methodology" section contains some explanation on the methodology used. I consider that in addition to the actual explanations, in order to help the readers better understand the methodology of the conducted research, the authors should devise a flowchart within the "Data and Methodology" section, a flowchart that depicts the steps that the authors have processed in developing their research and most important of all, the final target. This flowchart will facilitate the understanding of the proposed approach and in the same time will make the article more interesting to the readers if used as a graphical abstract.

Response: Thank you for this suggestion. As suggested, we have added a flow chart

• It will benefit the paper if the authors provide more details regarding the hardware (CPU, DRAM, GPU etc.) and software configurations (Operating System Version etc.) of the platform used to obtain the results in order to assure the reproducibility of the conducted study.

Response: Thank you for this suggestion. The author used EVIEWS 12 and the codes used is readily accessible at request from the corresponding author.

• All the equations within the manuscript should be numbered. In the actual form of the manuscript, all of the equations are not numbered so it is difficult to refer them.

Response: Thank you for this suggestion. As suggested, we have corrected it

• All the equations within the manuscript should be explained, demonstrated and cited, as there are some equations that have not been introduced in the literature for the first time by the authors and that are not cited.

Response: Thank you for this suggestion. As suggested, we have corrected it

• The authors should provide a more detailed explanation of how they came up with these equations by citing the appropriate sources from the literature.

Response: Thank you for this suggestion. We have cited the sources of this equations. Please kindly check the methodology section.

• Not all the notations within the equations are explained. Please revise the mathematical formalism of all the equations, the notations and their significance.

Response: Thank you for this suggestion. However, the Equations used are numbered pls kindly see Equation 1-6.

Ø Comments concerning the "Results and Discussion" section:

• The results presented in this section should provide a concise and precise description of the experimental results, their interpretation as well as the experimental conclusions that can be drawn.
• The authors must assume more clearly their own results and their own original contributions to the current state of knowledge.
• After having analyzed the results, the authors should move forward to the discussions within which the authors must extend the comparison between their developed strategy from the manuscript and other strategies that have been designed and used in the literature for this purpose.
• There are a lot of valuable studies in the scientific literature related to the subject of the manuscript to which the authors can compare, and this comparison will highlight even more the novel aspects that their paper brought in contrast to the existing studies. Consequently, to validate the usefulness of their research, within the discussion part of this section, the authors should compare their method from the manuscript and other ones that have been developed and used in the literature for the same purpose.
• I consider that the manuscript will be considerably improved if the authors state clearly within the manuscript who are the potential beneficiaries of the devised approach (proving once again the usefulness of the conducted study) and how will these potential beneficiaries be able to make use of the devised approach in their everyday activities. Are there any special constraints (material, ethical, financial or any other types) that have to be taken into account when employing the devised approach in a real case everyday use scenario?

 

Response: Thank you for this suggestion. As suggested, we have taken note of the suggestions. We have improved the policy sections. We compare the results with prior studies. Kindly see the results section.

 

Ø Comments concerning the "conclusion and policy ramifications" section:

• The “conclusions” at its current state should be entirely revised
• The authors should avoid simply summarizing the aspects that they have already stated in the body of the manuscript. Instead, they should interpret their findings at a higher level of abstraction than in the Discussion section. The authors should highlight whether, or to what extent they have managed to address the necessity identified within the Introduction section. The authors should avoid restating everything they did once again, but instead they should emphasize what their findings mean to the readers, therefore making the Conclusions section exciting and memorable to them.
• The authors should write a short Conclusions section, in fact they should conclude in just a few sentences given the rich discussion section that they will have devised in the body of the paper. I strongly recommend the authors to overcome the temptation to repeat material from the Introduction or from the rest of the paper only to make the Conclusions section longer under the false belief that a longer Conclusions section will seem more impressive.

 Response: Thank you for this suggestion. As suggested, we have restructured the conclusion section. Thank you.

Reviewer 3 Report

1.     This paper uncovered that the unidirectional causality from economic growth and renewable energy to CCO2 emissions is consistent in all nations. Please explain the reasons why the effect of exports and imports on CCO2 emissions is different in different nations.

2.     “Various studies have incorporated REC as a significant variable in the CO2 emissions framework due to its significance in reducing CO2 emissions”, Please give the full name of REC.

3.     “Similarly, exports boots ecological quality as shown by the negative effect of exports on CCO2”, “boots” should be corrected as “boost”. In general, exports mean resources and energy consumption, which may further lead to the increase of CO2 emissions. Why exports show the negative effect on CCO2?

4.     This sentence “On the flip side, economic expansion lower CCO2 and, thus, boosts ecological degradation in the MINT nations” is ambiguous. Moreover, “while imports only trigger CCO2 emissions in Turkiye and Mexico” , Do imports refer to raw materials or finished products? If it refers to finished products that are produced in other nations, imports may show negative effect on CCO2 emissions rather than trigger CCO2 emission.

Author Response

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

1. This paper uncovered that the unidirectional causality from economic growth and renewable energy to CCO2 emissions is consistent in all nations. Please explain the reasons why the effect of exports and imports on CCO2 emissions is different in different nations.

Response: Thank you for this suggestion. We have added a new subsection. Section 3.2 to justify why exports and imports are effect on CCO2 emissions are different.

2. “Various studies have incorporated REC as a significant variable in the CO2 emissions framework due to its significance in reducing CO2 emissions”, Please give the full name of REC.

Response: Thank you for this suggestion. As suggested, we have added it which is renewable energy consumption.

3. “Similarly, exports boots ecological quality as shown by the negative effect of exports on CCO2”, “boots” should be corrected as “boost”. In general, exports mean resources and energy consumption, which may further lead to the increase of CO2 emissions. Why exports show the negative effect on CCO2?

Response: Thank you for this suggestion. We have changed boots to boost. Furthermore, unlike prior studies that use CO2 emissions and ecological footprint, load capacity factor, we use consumption-based carbon emissions which is adjusted for trade. This proxy helps to differentiate between emissions produced in one country and the one emitted in another country. We have provided a theoretical framework to back up our findings. Kindly see Section 3.2. Thank you

4. This sentence “On the flip side, economic expansion lower CCO2 and, thus, boosts ecological degradation in the MINT nations” is ambiguous. Moreover, “while imports only trigger CCO2 emissions in Turkiye and Mexico”, Do imports refer to raw materials or finished products? If it refers to finished products that are produced in other nations, imports may show negative effect on CCO2 emissions rather than trigger CCO2 emission.

Response: Thank you for this suggestion. This scenario has been cleared in the theoretical framework which is as follows “Imports, encompass services and goods manufactured by a foreign nation and used locally, and must release CO₂ domestically. It is projected that boosting exports will cut CCO₂ emissions in the host nation, whereas expanding imports will boost CCO₂  emissions in the recipient state. Aside from imports and exports carbon emissions from the  process of production are retained in the host nation [38], [47]–[49]. From a theoretical standpoint, an increase in imports is associated to increased consumption because it is regarded one of the essential parts in any nation's overall consumption level, which is particularly true in the case of MINT nations. The MINT economies are emerging economies, and their imports include a significant share of  intermediate and final services and goods consumed by the host economies. Several studies such as [35], [38], [50] have already noticed this behavior”

 

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have incorporated the suggested changes.

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

After having assessed the suitability for publication of the Manuscript ID: sustainability-1979417 having the title "The race to zero emissions in MINT Economies: Can Economic Growth, Renewable Energy and Disintegrated Trade be the path to carbon neutrality?" I can conclude that the authors have addressed the most important signaled issues, therefore improving the manuscript.

Reviewer 3 Report

The  revision  has met the requirements，and is recommended to be accepted and published.