**2.4 Environmental impact: Energy sustainability**

The optimization of production and logistics processes allowed by Industry 4.0 could have a major impact on the management of the environmental crisis. Indeed, the processes of Industry 4.0 that allow energy savings and waste reductions to cut costs for firms would be equally beneficial for the preservation of natural resources and biodiversity. The Sustainable Development Goals established by the United Nations include the improvement of energy efficiency and better management of waste. Therefore, the improvements brought by Industry 4.0 would be in adequation with government environmental policies and regulations, which will most probably become much stricter in the coming decades.

Industry 4.0 allows improved production management thanks to the production monitoring capabilities of Industry 4.0. Constant monitoring of production efficiency and intelligent quality control offer great opportunities in terms of production efficiency, waste reduction, and improved reliability. Consequently, firms would have a better energy efficiency [27]. Industry 4.0 allows firms to make informed decisions based on the data-mining possibilities brought by sensors and AI. Relevant statistics on production efficiency, product life cycle, and energy consumption will be available to the firms [28]. Industry 4.0 will also connect the consumer with its energy consumption thanks to the sharing of statistics made possible by smart data communication technologies [29]. Energy consumers will be informed on their consumption, and this will promote self-responsibilities.

However, these improvements could easily be counterbalanced by the fact that Industry 4.0 requires the collection and storing of massive quantities of data in data centers, which significantly contribute to global warming. But this is not a fatality, and firms should not be stopped by this challenge, as innovative solutions allow the heat produced by data centers to be reused as a heating source. This strategy is especially used in Nordic countries such as Finland or Sweden.
