Integrated sustainable benchmark based on edge-cloud cooperation and big data analytics for energy-intensive manufacturing industries

The energy-intensive manufacturing industries exhibit high carbon intensity and environmental pollution, which leads a close association between economic growth and carbon emissions. Under the guidance of Industry 4.0, various advanced technologies were proposed to mitigate the impact of carbon emissions on economic development. However, these approaches predominantly focused on emission reduction, with limited consideration given to the interplay between economic growth and environmental sustainability. To solve the above problem, this study proposes an integrated sustainability benchmark that leverages edge-cloud cooperation and big data to provide information support for examining the decoupling relationship between economic growth and carbon emissions at multiple levels. Then, the proposed architecture and models in this paper are validated through a case study that utilise multiple levels of production data from a partner enterprise. Finally, the case study demonstrates commendable environmental efforts by cooperative companies to decouple economic growth from carbon emissions, substantial enhancements should be implemented in terms of social and managerial sustainability.