Towards Just and Integrated Energy Transition in Taiwan: A Socio-Spatial Perspective

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Please find enclosed suggestions for improving the structure and quality of the paper. Good luck!

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you very much for your constructive feedback. Here are our detailed responses to your comments.

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper is well written and structured, interesting, relevant in its approaches and conclusions. It is excessively long and should be summarized, in particular, part 4.

The empirical part should be improved by using the results of the structured interviews that are not shown.

The discussion revolves exclusively around the Changhua realm. It would be more appropriate to show the territorial and energy planning ties with the rest of the country.

The concepts of justice used require further reflection in territorial terms. The local dimension is important (especially in terms of citizen or political participation and, therefore, in procedural terms) but it is essential at the national level when it comes to distributing costs and benefits.

The urban dimension has been omitted in the paper. It is important to show whether there are also sacrifices by the urban population in terms of prices (of energy, of primary products) or commitments to improve energy efficiency. It is important to show that the costs and benefits of the energy transition are unevenly distributed between city and country.

In the final discussion, there should be clearer proposals in terms of the notions of justice used.

Paragraph 4 should be summarised.

 

Author Response

 

 

Points made by the Reviewers	Response to Reviewers
Reviewer 2
The paper is well written and structured, interesting, relevant in its approaches and conclusions. It is excessively long and should be summarized, in particular, part 4.	Thank you very much for the kind words about the quality and relevant of our work. We shortened Section 3, Results (previous Section 4) as requested.
The empirical part should be improved by using the results of the structured interviews that are not shown.	The interview insights are now explicitly referred to in the  passage of the text advocating the need to incorporate integrated planning withing the energy transition process. Although this research method was not central to the methodology and was used mainly to verify and deepen the insights produced through other research methods. As requested by the Reviewer, the interview results have been mentioned in sections 1.2 and 4.1.1.
The concepts of justice used require further reflection in territorial terms. The local dimension is important (especially in terms of citizen or political participation and, therefore, in procedural terms) but it is essential at the national level when it comes to distributing costs and benefits.	Thank you for this valuable comment. We understand the importance of developing the justice concept further at the national level, yet our focus was on revealing the urgent need to address the neglected injustices produced by energy transition on the regional and local scales. That said, in response to this comment, we refined section 4.1.2 to underline the potential way to integrate the justice concept at a higher level that would help to pursue distributional, procedural, and recognition justice within the Taiwanese energy transition efforts.
The urban dimension has been omitted in the paper. It is important to show whether there are also sacrifices by the urban population in terms of prices (of energy, of primary products) or commitments to improve energy efficiency. It is important to show that the costs and benefits of the energy transition are unevenly distributed between city and country.	We understand the importance of the urban dimension in the context of energy justice, yet, due to most conflicts happening mainly in non-urban areas, we chose to focus on rural, peripheral parts of Changhua region. This choice and the limitations for the research that it entails is explained in section 4, Discussion. We also suggested that future research could complement ours by investigating the topic from the perspective of the urban areas.
In the final discussion, there should be clearer proposals in terms of the notions of justice used.	Thank you for this useful comment. As suggested, section 4.1 now includes a deeper discussion of the Conceptual Framework we used , which indicates a way for integrating justice as part of transition planning.
Paragraph 4 should be summarised.	The previous section 4, currently section 3, has been summarised as requested.

 

 

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I still believe that Theories and Methodology should be called Materials and methods, integrating the current Methodology section and Research methods. The theories (section 2.1.) can be enclosed to the Introduction section.

Author Response

Dear Editors and Dear Reviewer 1,

Thank you for your comments and suggestions. Here is how we responded to them.

1.  "I still believe that Theories and Methodology should be called Materials and methods, integrating the current Methodology section and Research methods."  Our response: we rename the section accordingly. We also moved the conceptual framework sub-section to the part where we review the literature.
2. " The theories (section 2.1.) can be enclosed to the Introduction section." Our response: we decided not to follow this suggestion, because this would make the introduction very long. We also consulted the structure of other papers published in Land and noticed that many of them do have a literature review as part of a separate section. Thus, we integrated the conceptual framework with the literature review in the revised manuscript.

 

In addition, we checked the spelling and English language. We also added a graphical abstract. 

We hope that you will find the paper ready for publication now. Thanks again for taking time to provide us with valuable feedback.

Kind regards,

Authors