PCLM-D-25-00427

Multi-sector demand response for cost optimal energy transitions

PLOS Climate

Dear Mr. Barnes,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS Climate. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS Climate’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Feb 04 2026 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at climate@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pclm/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A letter that responds to each point raised by the editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Jihoon Min, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

Journal Requirements:

1. Please amend your detailed Financial Disclosure statement. This is published with the article. It must therefore be completed in full sentences and contain the exact wording you wish to be published.

i. Please clarify all sources of financial support for your study. List the grants, grant numbers, and organizations that funded your study, including funding received from your institution. Please note that suppliers of material support, including research materials, should be recognized in the Acknowledgements section rather than in the Financial Disclosure.

ii. State the initials, alongside each funding source, of each author to receive each grant. For example: "This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (####### to AM; ###### to CJ) and the National Science Foundation (###### to AM)."

2. We ask that a manuscript source file is provided at Revision. Please upload your manuscript file as a .doc, .docx, .rtf or .tex.

3. Some material included in your submission may be copyrighted. According to PLOS’s copyright policy, authors who use figures or other material (e.g., graphics, clipart, maps) from another author or copyright holder must demonstrate or obtain permission to publish this material under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License used by PLOS journals. Please closely review the details of PLOS’s copyright requirements here: PLOS Licenses and Copyright. If you need to request permissions from a copyright holder, you may use PLOS's Copyright Content Permission form.

Please respond directly to this email or email the journal office and provide any known details concerning your material's license terms and permissions required for reuse, even if you have not yet obtained copyright permissions or are unsure of your material's copyright compatibility.

Potential Copyright Issues:

a. Figure 2 and 3 in  PLOS_Barnes_SI.pdf: please (a) provide a direct link to the base layer of the map (i.e., the country or region border shape) and ensure this is also included in the figure legend; and (b) provide a link to the terms of use / license information for the base layer image or shapefile. We cannot publish proprietary or copyrighted maps (e.g. Google Maps, Mapquest) and the terms of use for your map base layer must be compatible with our CC-BY 4.0 license.

Note: if you created the map in a software program like R or ArcGIS, please locate and indicate the source of the basemap shapefile onto which data has been plotted.

If your map was obtained from a copyrighted source please amend the figure so that the base map used is from an openly available source. Alternatively, please provide explicit written permission from the copyright holder granting you the right to publish the material under our CC-BY 4.0 license.

Please note that the following CC BY licenses are compatible with PLOS license: CC BY 4.0, CC BY 2.0 and CC BY 3.0, meanwhile such licenses as CC BY-ND 3.0 and others are not compatible due to additional restrictions.

If you are unsure whether you can use a map or not, please do reach out and we will be able to help you. The following websites are good examples of where you can source open access or public domain maps:

* U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) - All maps are in the public domain. (http://www.usgs.gov)

* PlaniGlobe - All maps are published under a Creative Commons license so please cite “PlaniGlobe, http://www.planiglobe.com, CC BY 2.0” in the image credit after the caption. (http://www.planiglobe.com/?lang=enl)

* Natural Earth - All maps are public domain. (http://www.naturalearthdata.com/about/terms-of-use/)

If the reviewer comments include a recommendation to cite specific previously published works, please review and evaluate these publications to determine whether they are relevant and should be cited. There is no requirement to cite these works unless the editor has indicated otherwise.

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

-->Comments to the Author

1. Does this manuscript meet PLOS Climate’s publication criteria? Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe methodologically and ethically rigorous research with conclusions that are appropriately drawn based on the data presented.-->

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

-->2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?-->

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

-->3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available (please refer to the Data Availability Statement at the start of the manuscript PDF file)?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception. The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.-->

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

-->4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS Climate does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.-->

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

-->5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)-->

Reviewer #1: The paper addresses a highly relevant topic by exploring the intersection of multi-sector energy systems (electricity and heat) and Demand Response (DR). While most existing literature focuses predominantly on electrical DR, this study fills a valid research gap by expanding the scope to thermal loads and coupling it with capacity expansion modeling in PyPSA-USA. However, significant improvements are required prior to publication.

1) The rationale for selecting 2030 must be clarified. 2030 is considered "near-term" (only 5 years away), whereas most capacity expansion models target 2040 or 2050 to demonstrate long-term investment benefits and transition pathways. For a study set in 2030, the potential for reducing capacity is physically constrained. Most building heating systems (boilers, furnaces) that will be operational in 2030 are already installed today.

2) The paper acknowledges that assuming consumers act with pure economic rationality is a limitation. For a study focused on pricing, this is a major weakness. Real-world thermal DR is driven primarily by user comfort, not just marginal prices. Conduct a Sensitivity Analysis on DR elasticity or adoption rates. How does the system benefit change if only 20% of thermal loads respond to the price signal?

3) The paper notes that "Thermal demand response reduces service sector space heating capacity." You must highlight the interaction between Thermal DR and storage technologies. Does Thermal DR cannibalize the value of battery storage, or does it complement it?

4) A primary value of Demand Response is providing flexibility without the start-up costs or ramping limits associated with conventional generation. By ignoring these constraints on the fossil fuel side (Unit Commitment), the model likely underestimates the value of DR. Please explicitly state in the Limitations/Discussion section that this omission leads to a conservative estimate of DR's benefits.

5) The literature review needs to be updated with the most recent studies. Currently, there are not many references from 2024, 2025. Please search for and incorporate the latest research to ensure relevance. For example: van Heerden, Rik, et al. "Demand-side strategies enable rapid and deep cuts in buildings and transport emissions to 2050." Nature Energy 10.3 (2025): 380-394. Yang et al. "Assessing optimized time-of-use pricing for electric vehicle charging in deep vehicle-grid integration system." Energy Economics 138 (2024): 107852….

Reviewer #2: This is an interesting and worthwhile paper that uses a sector-coupled linear energy system model of the USA, PyPSA-USA, to analyze the effects of demand response for a cost-effective future energy system. I have no fundamental concerns, but several comments that I would like to see addressed before recommending publication.

Overarching comments:

• The storyline could be sharpened. What is the exact research questions and what is the main result? Is this about the impact of demand response on the grid or on multiple indicators?

• The authors should clarify the rationale for pricing the demand response based on the annual average marginal price of energy. Is this supposed to represent real-world cost of a physical storage unit (e.g., a battery, or a thermal energy storage), intangible inconvenience costs, or something else entirely? If it’s not the cost of a physical storage, please explain the motivation for this modelling choice. I have some concerns about using the annual average marginal price of energy as a cost estimate for DR because the system value of DR depends strongly on temporal effects. DR will most likely be highly valuable in a few hours of renewable scarcity, while it may have limited value in other hours of the year.

• Concerning the figures: As DR is fundamentally about shifting demand in time, I would like to see a figure in the results that shows how this works in PyPSA-USA. This would probably be more illustrative than all the heatmap plots currently in the manuscript.

Detailed comments:

• In the abstract, starting a sentence with “And...” may not be ideal.

• Figure 1 gives the impression that DR is primarily about creating a load profile that is as close to a constant baseload as possible. While this may indeed reduce strain on the grid, aligning demand with supply of variable renewables will often involve the opposite: shifting demand to mid-day solar peaks. Similarly, the example of charging EVs overnight (line 14) is typically not optimal in future high-VRE power systems. It would be good to discuss DR not just in terms of easing pressure on the grid, but also alignment with supply variability. It may also make sense to update Figure 1 accordingly.

• Line 50: Mentioning how prevalent incentive-based and price-based programs are would be interesting, before moving to their representation in energy planning models.

• Line 54: It would be good to explain the insights from ref 16-18 a bit further. For example, instead of saying that they “give key considerations when applying DR to aggregated load profiles”, explicitly say what key considerations these are, such that readers don’t have to look it up themselves.

• Line 57: It’s not clear whether all the metrics introduced in this section have been devised by the authors or come from other sources. The purpose of their introduction is also not fully clear: are these metrics revisited and quantified in the results section?

• Line 65 (paragraph): What do previous studies say about system level impacts on firm capacity requirements, e.g., gas peaker plants?

• Line 69: perhaps use “valuable” instead of “good”

• Line 75: Please check if “peak residual load” isn’t the better term instead of “peak load” in order to highlight that this is after subtracting any VRE generation. Furthermore, this paragraph does not mention the potentially severe consequences of load shedding, which is a last-resort measure in most places and not just a regular event.

• Line 124: Please verify that DSM and DR are used in line with the definition in the first paragraph, with DSM also including energy efficiency measures.

• Line 126: What’s the “end-use electrical curve”? Just the development of electrical load over time?

• Line 157: “features” instead of “feature”

• Line 158: The advantage of shifting the heating load instead of the electricity load for heating is not clear to me. Isn’t this simply modelled as a store?

• Line 178: What are the two different systems? What is meant by “system makeup”?

• Line 198: What are renewable potential zones?

• Line 211: It’s not clear what “additional” refers to, i.e. what other constraints are already in the model. This sentence could simply be deleted.

• Line 214: Please explain how electricity imports are modelled in terms of availability and costs.

• Line 222: I find it hard to follow these three reasons. First, wouldn’t incentive-based programs rather target large loads such as heat pumps instead of lighting or washing machines? Second, couldn’t an implementation of incentive-based programs also enable calculating the willingness to pay? Third, what kind of intertemporal constraints do you mean?

• Line 237: “that” instead of “to”

• Line 244: What is the motivation for using carrier-average pricing? As the store that represents DR must be linked to a specific energy carrier, what is the real-world meaning of averaging over all energy carriers when pricing DR?

• Line 290: I’m also surprised that DR offers no cost savings in California, even in the high gas price scenario. Could you provide a comparison between the marginal costs of DR and the marginal cost of gas plants and the marginal cost of imports?

• Line 295: I’m confused by this paragraph. Why are DR costs not seen by the system? In the modelling, they are the marginal cost of the store, so they should be seen by the system. This point relates to my concern raised above about the rationale of pricing DR. Please clarify and explain.

• Line 312: It could be nice to see a map plot that shows the congestion at the grid level within New England.

• Line 314: Lower than what?

• Line 321: Please explain how you infer only from the system cost perspective whether thermal and electrical DR are complementary or competing. In my understanding, you would need to look at how much each DR option is used across the different scenarios order to assess this claim.

• Line 350: “A higher price” not “an higher price”

• Line 368/Fig 10: In this section about end-use capacity, I would expect to see a figure that shows capacity of heat pumps and gas furnaces across different scenarios in absolute (GW) terms, not just relative changes to the base scenario in a heatmap.

• Line 369: If air source and ground source heat pumps behave so differently, it would be good to show them separately in the figure. It’s confusing that the described effect is so large that it enables a 90% reduction of heat pump capacity. This is so extreme that it looks more like a modelling artefact than a real-world effect.

• Line 383: What is the rationale for fixing the deployment of GSHP to ASHP? Is this a fixed constraint? Using “may” makes it sound optional, but it’s probably not?

• Line 390: I am confused by this sentence. Why does overbuilding ASHP now “obtain the more stable COP” when its GSHP that have a more stable COP?

• Line 405: Please add a figure that shows EV deployment across scenarios, potentially in the supplement. Also, please explain how EV deployment works in PyPSA; is there a certain transport demand that can be met by different technologies such as combustion engines or EVs?

• Line 416: I’m surprised that electrical DR does not seem to enable better integration of VREs, thereby reducing emissions. Please explain.

• Fig 12: This is electrical load, correct? Please specify in the caption.

• Line 455: If you don’t show results for all these metrics, you also don’t need to introduce them in the methods section. In my opinion, this just makes the paper longer and harder to follow, without adding much value. My suggestion is to shorten this section into a single paragraph for the limitations section.

• Line 525: Perhaps “Methodological insights” is better than “Academic insights”

• Line 532: I don’t think the conclusion section is the right place to discuss such a methodological example. Please consider restructuring.

• Fig. 13/14: This stylised example seems to only look at marginal costs if both generators are already built and paid off. However, one key argument in favor of DR is that it requires a system with less firm capacity. Please explain why this was left out and what the main point of this stylised example is.

**********

-->6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.-->

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

**********

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

--> -->-->Figure Resubmissions:

-->-->While revising your submission, we strongly recommend that you use PLOS’s NAAS tool (https://ngplosjournals.pagemajik.ai/artanalysis) to test your figure files. NAAS can convert your figure files to the TIFF file type and meet basic requirements (such as print size, resolution), or provide you with a report on issues that do not meet our requirements and that NAAS cannot fix.-->-->

After uploading your figures to PLOS’s NAAS tool - https://ngplosjournals.pagemajik.ai/artanalysis, NAAS will process the files provided and display the results in the "Uploaded Files" section of the page as the processing is complete. If the uploaded figures meet our requirements (or NAAS is able to fix the files to meet our requirements), the figure will be marked as "fixed" above. If NAAS is unable to fix the files, a red "failed" label will appear above. When NAAS has confirmed that the figure files meet our requirements, please download the file via the download option, and include these NAAS processed figure files when submitting your revised manuscript.-->

PCLM-D-25-00427R1

Multi-sector demand response for cost optimal energy transitions

PLOS Climate

Dear Dr. Barnes,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS Climate. After careful consideration, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Apr 28 2026 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at climate@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pclm/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A letter that responds to each point raised by the editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

As the corresponding author, your ORCID iD is verified in the submission system and will appear in the published article. PLOS supports the use of ORCID, and we encourage all coauthors to register for an ORCID iD and use it as well. Please encourage your coauthors to verify their ORCID iD within the submission system before final acceptance, as unverified ORCID iDs will not appear in the published article. Only the individual author can complete the verification step; PLOS staff cannot verify ORCID iDs on behalf of authors.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Jihoon Min, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

Journal Requirements:

If the reviewer comments include a recommendation to cite specific previously published works, please review and evaluate these publications to determine whether they are relevant and should be cited. There is no requirement to cite these works unless the editor has indicated otherwise.

Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

-->Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.-->

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

**********

-->2. Does this manuscript meet PLOS Climate’s publication criteria? Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe methodologically and ethically rigorous research with conclusions that are appropriately drawn based on the data presented.-->

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

-->3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?-->

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

-->4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available (please refer to the Data Availability Statement at the start of the manuscript PDF file)?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception. The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.-->

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

-->5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS Climate does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.-->

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

-->6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)-->

Reviewer #1: I have reviewed the revised manuscript and am pleased to note that the authors have comprehensively addressed all the concerns raised in the previous round of review. I believe the manuscript is now of high quality and suitable for publication. I am happy to recommend that the paper be accepted in its current form.

Reviewer #2: I would like to commend the authors for addressing all of my comments in depth. I believe the changes in the revised manuscript have substantially improved the comprehensibility of the sophisticated modelling approaches used. I only have a few minor comments to be addressed before recommending publication:

• Line 20: Superfluous “as”?

• Line 38: “high temporal capacity expansion framework”. Do you mean something like “capacity expansion model with high temporal resolution”?

• Line 62: the word “to” is duplicated

• Line 171: I only now realized that a subsection entitled “PyPSA-USA” might better start with a brief explanation of the model itself. Instead, the first paragraph of this section is mostly an explanation of the choice of the modelling year 2030 and other modelling choices that are more related to scenarios than the actual model. Consider restructuring this section.

• Line 250: With this new paragraph, the symbol list that’s necessary to understand equation 1 and 2 is now pushed back quite a bit. I would suggest to put the symbol list right after the equations.

• Minor typesetting issue: Abbreviations are often typeset strangely, e.g. “Air Source Heat Pump (ASHP)s” instead of “Air Source Heat Pumps (ASHPs)”

• Line 266: Maybe say “cost savings from DR” instead of “cost savings” to be very clear.

• Line 390 (paragraph): Thanks for the explanation. However, I feel like this paragraph is still a bit hard to follow due to the complexity of the GSHP capacity constraint. In the main text, I would suggest to only state the fundamental issue that GSHPs cannot be built in urban areas due to space constraints (you only say this in the SI so far, but I believe this is the most important information for readers). You could then point to the SI for the implementation of linking GSHPs and ASHPs based on population as you aggregate across rural/urban regions.

• Line 455: Consider adding “or a price on emissions” here.

• Line 563: Looking at Fig. 14, “maximum cost benefits” are only unlocked with 100% participation, not 20% participation. What am I missing?

**********

-->7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.-->

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

**********

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

-->Figure Resubmissions:

-->-->While revising your submission, we strongly recommend that you use PLOS’s NAAS tool (https://ngplosjournals.pagemajik.ai/artanalysis) to test your figure files. NAAS can convert your figure files to the TIFF file type and meet basic requirements (such as print size, resolution), or provide you with a report on issues that do not meet our requirements and that NAAS cannot fix.-->-->

After uploading your figures to PLOS’s NAAS tool - https://ngplosjournals.pagemajik.ai/artanalysis, NAAS will process the files provided and display the results in the "Uploaded Files" section of the page as the processing is complete. If the uploaded figures meet our requirements (or NAAS is able to fix the files to meet our requirements), the figure will be marked as "fixed" above. If NAAS is unable to fix the files, a red "failed" label will appear above. When NAAS has confirmed that the figure files meet our requirements, please download the file via the download option, and include these NAAS processed figure files when submitting your revised manuscript.-->

PCLM-D-25-00427R2

Multi-sector demand response for cost optimal energy transitions

PLOS Climate

Dear Dr. Barnes,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS Climate.

Before we can accept your submission for publication in the journal, we need to ask you to make an amendment to your Financial Disclosure. This currently reads:

"This research was finally supported by Mitacs (https://www.mitacs.ca/) and Generac Power Systems (https://www.generac.com/) under Mitacs project IT33642 (to T.B. and T.N.).

Generac Power Systems reviewed the final manuscript prior to submission to ensure company secrets remained confidential and that business-relevant intellectual property was protected before a public disclosure. The funders, with the exception of the co-authors, had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript."

We feel that the phrasing at the start of the second paragraph could raise concerns about compliance with our Data Availability Policy (https://journals.plos.org/climate/s/data-availability), which states that commercial interests are not a valid reason for the exclusion of any data or methodological details required for reproducibility. Although we are satisfied that your submission does contain the necessary information, we feel it is important to avoid any perceived conflict between the Data Availability Statement and Financial Disclosure. We therefore ask that you either remove the sentence about review by Generac Power Systems or add an additional sentence after this that explicitly states that this review did not lead to the removal of any elements necessary for reproducibility and compliance with PLOS Climate's Data Availability Policy.

In addition, in the interests of transparency and per our policy (https://journals.plos.org/climate/s/competing-interests), we ask that you update your Competing Interests Statement to declare the affiliation of two of the authors to Generac Power Systems.

Please submit your revised manuscript by May 09 2026 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at climate@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pclm/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A letter that responds to each point raised by the editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

As the corresponding author, your ORCID iD is verified in the submission system and will appear in the published article. PLOS supports the use of ORCID, and we encourage all coauthors to register for an ORCID iD and use it as well. Please encourage your coauthors to verify their ORCID iD within the submission system before final acceptance, as unverified ORCID iDs will not appear in the published article. Only the individual author can complete the verification step; PLOS staff cannot verify ORCID iDs on behalf of authors.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Dr Jamie Males

Executive Editor

PLOS Climate

on behalf of

Jihoon Min, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

Journal Requirements:

If the reviewer comments include a recommendation to cite specific previously published works, please review and evaluate these publications to determine whether they are relevant and should be cited. There is no requirement to cite these works unless the editor has indicated otherwise.

Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

Reviewers' comments:

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

-->Figure Resubmissions:

-->-->While revising your submission, we strongly recommend that you use PLOS’s NAAS tool (https://ngplosjournals.pagemajik.ai/artanalysis) to test your figure files. NAAS can convert your figure files to the TIFF file type and meet basic requirements (such as print size, resolution), or provide you with a report on issues that do not meet our requirements and that NAAS cannot fix.-->-->

After uploading your figures to PLOS’s NAAS tool - https://ngplosjournals.pagemajik.ai/artanalysis, NAAS will process the files provided and display the results in the "Uploaded Files" section of the page as the processing is complete. If the uploaded figures meet our requirements (or NAAS is able to fix the files to meet our requirements), the figure will be marked as "fixed" above. If NAAS is unable to fix the files, a red "failed" label will appear above. When NAAS has confirmed that the figure files meet our requirements, please download the file via the download option, and include these NAAS processed figure files when submitting your revised manuscript.-->

Multi-sector demand response for cost optimal energy transitions

PCLM-D-25-00427R3

Dear Mr. Barnes,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript 'Multi-sector demand response for cost optimal energy transitions' has been provisionally accepted for publication in PLOS Climate.

Before your manuscript can be formally accepted you will need to complete some formatting changes, which you will receive in a follow-up email from a member of our team.

Please note that your manuscript will not be scheduled for publication until you have made the required changes, so a swift response is appreciated.

IMPORTANT: The editorial review process is now complete. PLOS will only permit corrections to spelling, formatting or significant scientific errors from this point onwards. Requests for major changes, or any which affect the scientific understanding of your work, will cause delays to the publication date of your manuscript.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact climate@plos.org.

Thank you again for supporting Open Access publishing; we are looking forward to publishing your work in PLOS Climate.

Best regards,

Jihoon Min, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

***********************************************************

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

Reviewer Comments (if any, and for reference):