IEA EBC Annex83 Positive Energy Districts

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The article shows a good approach to the PEDs from the current situation and exposes the evolution in the last 10 years, from concepts such as ZEB and NZEB to the PEDs.

The IEA EBC Annex 83 is international in scope, however the article seems to focus on the European framework. It would be interesting to have an approach from other countries outside of Europe

Author Response

Thank you for reviewing our article! 

We have revised the article based on your feedack as the following (line numbers refer to revised version):

Firstly, added input related to buildings role in emission reduction in Canada )(Introduction section, lines 46-56) and about NZEB and Net ZEB concepts in USA, Korea and Australia ( in introduction section, lines 76-80)). Secondly, added text about which outside-of Europe experts take part in the Annex83 (in introduction section, lines 202-205). Thirdly, the challenges related to the PED implementation and concept at the global level are discussed  (in the introduction section, lines 186-202). Fourthly, the Figures 1 and 2 in the introduction present the global context, this explanation is added. Lastly, Table 1: added 2 examples from Canada and USA.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper represents an accurate representation of the activities of the Annex 83 platform, whose activities have just started and will end in 2024.
it is a good introduction to the activities in progress and therefore an excellent tool for disseminating activities and involving researchers interested in the PED theme.
The conclusions are weak and not well structured.
References in the conclusions to partner activities of other projects or case studies should be in the body of the text and not the final chapter.
It is suggested to review the conclusions and to clarify the relations with other European platforms such as JPI Urban Europe, only mentioned in the text.

Author Response

Thank you for reviewing our article. 
We have made revisions based on your feedback as the following (line numbers refer to revised version):

The conclusions are weak and not well structured.
Conclusions chapter has been re-written. Part of the text has been moved to introduction (lines 186-205). Added some clarification and analysis.

References in the conclusions to partner activities of other projects or case studies should be in the body of the text and not the final chapter.

Refereneces are moved to the body text, mainly to table1.

It is suggested to review the conclusions and to clarify the relations with other European platforms such as JPI Urban Europe, only mentioned in the text.

Added text about European platforms, lines 656-665.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to review the manuscript “IEA EBC Annex83 Positive Energy Districts”. It addresses an interesting topic, that has the potential to make a relevant contribution to Europe’s transition to become carbon neutral.

The manuscript sets out to add clarity to the concept of Positive Energy Districts (PEDs). However, I do not think that it achieves the statged goal of describing, “the challenges of PEDs and the issues that are open for discussions” (Line 11). The manuscript provides a succinct description of the principal objectives and activities planned within the frame of the International Energy Agency’s ‘Annex 83’, which was launched in 2020. Moreover it gives a descriptive overview of a number of initiatives tackling different aspects - technologies and methodological approaches - to establish PEDs. These examples are not supported by a critical analysis of the principal challenges around PEDs – including those related to their role in framing a broader discussion on a transition to carbon neutrality, the issue of the geographical scope (how are PEDs established as boundary objects in highly interconnected communities?), and the role of different stakeholders. Finally there is no attempt at elaborating a ‘working’ definition of PEDs within the scope of the Annex 83 initiative – the author(s) merely provide a description of a PED (Lines 152-155) and this is not referenced.

In truth, my impression is that the authors’ goals are to raise awareness on IEA’s Annex 83 initiative and perhaps draw the buy-in of relevant stakeholders, which is positive. However, it is early days – there appears to have been no substantial outputs from the tasks and sub-tasks of the Annex 83 initiative (e.g. case studies, development of a methodologies, case studies etc.). The tasks and sub-tasks are described in Section 3 in the future tense as though to imply that these are still to be implemented or have only just been initiated. The manuscript does not elaborate a conceptual framework on which to base an analysis of PEDs.

The author(s) could have attempted a systematic review of the literature in order to add some clarity on the notion of PEDs, how this is linked to related concepts on zero energy buildings and nearly zero energy buildings and the state of the art. However, this was not undertaken here. It is not clear how the Scopus search was implemented (see Section 1 and Figure 1) and no details are provided on the methodology used (e.g. search criteria used, time frame considered etc.).

Finally, there is limited discussion on PEDs as an area of research and a future research agenda is not elaborated.

Detailed comments:

Section-1 Introduction:

I feel the reader does not get a good sense of aims and objectives that the article intends to achieve as these are not clearly explained in the introduction. The introduction is rather long; it addresses a number of important topics including an overview of the policy framework; and the PED concept is also introduced. I think that Section 1 could be divided into a number of sections with sub-headings that tackle the topics currently included in Section 1.

Based on the data provided and on the policy framework mentioned in this section, the authors need to emphasize that the article takes a European Perspective.

Figure 1: right-hand side y axis not labelled including lack of unit of analysis; left-hand side y axis: unclear what this refers to (is it a cumulative figure?).

Section 3 - Activities and expected results

This section is written in the future tense indicating that the tasks and sub-tasks are still to be implemented as part of the Annex 83 initiative and there are no significant research outputs that could shed light on the role and scope of PEDs. The reader does not get a good sense of how the planned activities map out against and how these tasks draw from other similar initiatives implemented elsewhere e.g. those related to ZEBs and/or NZEBs. In line 265, who are the, quote: “stakeholders usually involved in the development of PEDs”?

Section 4 – Discussion and conclusions

This section is mainly descriptive of (ongoing?) projects that adopt the positive energy districts (PED) concept. However there is very limited discussion on the conceptual and methodological challenges linked to unravelling the concept of PEDs, mainly because these aspects are not sufficiently and adequately addressed in the manuscript. Future challenges that inspire a future research agenda for this field of research I think it would be important to include a Methodology section.

Suggested reading:

Shnapp, S., Paci, D., Bertoldi, P. (2020) Enabling Positive Energy Districts across Europe: energy efficiency couples renewable energy, EUR 30280 EN, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, 2020, ISBN 978-92-76-21043-6, doi:10.2760/452028, JRC121405.

Lindholm, O., Rehman, H., Reda, F. (2021) Positioning Positive Energy Districts in European Cities, Buildings 11,19.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors state clearly that the article is a "presentation and dissemination activity for the Annex 83 project". In its present format, I do not feel that the revised article presents any original research or reviews progress in the topic of discussion.

Author Response

Thank you for your continuing interest towards our manuscript titled “IEA EBC Annex83 Positive Energy Districts”. Editors and reviewers of the manuscript provided us with very useful comments on the manuscript. We are pleased to consider all the reviewer’s comments and suggestions. It has helped to improve the quality of the manuscript. All of these comments have now been addressed in the revised manuscript. Based on the feedback please find our response.

• Revised  chapter 1.6 clarifying the aim and objectives of the article.
• The progress and results of the existing PEDs has been added in chapter 4 (lines 749-765)
• The English language has been checked and corrected throughout the manuscript.