Role of Energy and Materials in Industry 4.0—A Pragmatic Deliberation

Energy is elemental for economic prosperity of any developing country such as India, which imports more than 80% of its crude oil resources. While transitioning towards Industry 4.0, which corresponds to connectivity amongst the cyber-physical systems in the manufacturing as well as service domain, the country has to equally emphasize upon the sustainability aspect of energy generation, procurement and distribution. This paper aims to present an overview of pragmatic aspects of various energy sources and options in the context of Industry 4.0, which is previously untouched. This paper elaborates upon the effect of surge in demand of electric vehicles on pricing of important battery metals as well as Chinese supremacy in supply chain control. Our understanding of the various technical reports reveals that Standards and Labelling (S&L) programme initiated by the government has been able to achieve 4% reduction in energy consumption in India, while it is about 14% in the United States. Pertaining to sharp increase in quantum of connected devices and appliances such as smart metres, sensors, street lights and space conditioning, there is huge stress on the prices of battery metals such as nickel, cobalt and lithium. In such a demanding scenario, there has been emergence of business models equipped with digital technologies such as virtual power plant (VPP) and digital energy exchanges. At the same time, the concerns of data privacy and cybersecurity are prevalent. This paper presents an overview of all these aspects of effect of Industry 4.0 transition on energy sustainability in a pragmatic manner.