# More Sustainability in Industry through Industrial Internet of Things?
## 1 Introduction  
The global sustainable development policies for the coming decade have been influenced by two major negotiation outcomes: the \"Green Economy Concept\" and the \"Sustainable Development Goals\". In 2012, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development agreed on policies supporting a green economy, shortly defined as \"a low-carbon, resource efficient, and socially inclusive\" economy [1]. The conference initiated also the second important outcome--the 2030 agenda for sustainable development was adopted in 2015 encompassing 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) and defining the direction and aims of sustainable development. Industry is one of the key sectors in implementing a green economy and the SDGs, for the latter especially SDG 9, aiming at \"Building a resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation\" as well as SDG 12 claiming to \"Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns\" [2]. Against this background, the nascent transformation of industrial production due to digitalization is of great interest from a sustainable development point of view. The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is characterized by the fusion of the physical world of industrial production with the digital world of information technology--creating a digitalized and interconnected industrial production. This enables the exchange of live data between machines and product components allowing for a continuous monitoring and steering of relevant production processes. Thus, industrial production becomes much more flexible and transparent. Research and policies concerning the IIoT have so far mainly focused on economic benefits and ways of supporting the implementation of IIoT in companies and different branches as well as on technical aspects like finding solutions for standardization or data security. At present, only a few scientific projects and studies deal with the implication of the IIoT for sustainable development but recently the linkages between digitalization and sustainability are attracting more and more attention. In this paper, we will discuss how a sustainable development can potentially benefit from the industrial transformation through digitalization--focusing especially on the environmental dimension. The paper starts with a state of the art analysis of approaches addressing this topic. The following sections provide an overview over the characteristics and findings of a survey in China. We chose China as a case study mainly for two reasons. Firstly, China has a very strong industrial sector: according to the China statistical yearbook the industrial sector (excluding construction) accounted for 36.3% of Gross Domestic Product [3]. With the \"Made in China 2025\" strategy released in 2015, the Chinese government has expressed strong interest in strengthening China's manufacturing sector. The digitalization of manufacturing is hereby seen as a key factor for success [4]. Secondly, China, as the most highly populated country with high energy consumption and resulting emissions, plays an important part in fighting climate change and fulfill the \"1.5-degree-target\" agreed on in the 2015 Paris United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Industrial facilities were responsible for 69.4% of overall energy consumption in 2014 [5]. In the same year, 65.6% of all energy was derived from coal being the main energy source [6]. Industrial coal burning is the dominant contributor to PM\({}_{2.5}\) as a study shows [7]. In 2014, 72 out of 113 surveyed key cities in China exceeded the annual air quality standards for particulate matter set by the WHO by factor 6 or higher (PM\({}_{2.5\,\mathrm{annual}}\) = 10 \(\upmu\)g/m\({}^{3}\)) [8]. Particulate matter is associated with cardiovascular and respiratory diseases and cancer--even at levels below the WHO limit [9]. China suffers severely from this air pollution and has a strong motivation to mitigate these negative environmental impacts.