The Hidden Footprint of Truck Connectivity A Life Cycle Assessment of Vehicle-to-Cloud Connectivity

Abstract

As the transport sector undergoes a rapid digital transformation, the environmental trade-offs between the benefits of vehicle connectivity and the burdens of the supporting digital infrastructure remain poorly understood. This study performs a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to quantify the environmental impact of cloud-based data center services required for truck connectivity and balances these against the enabled fuel savings. The assessment covers the life cycle of a data center, including building construction, hardware manufacturing, and operations. The results indicate that the environmental burden of data centers is heavily dominated by the operational phase and the manufacturing of servers, where printed circuit boards (PCBs) constitute the primary impact driver. In contrast, building construction has a minor influence on the total life cycle impact. The magnitude of the impacts from the operational phase is primarily a result of the high electricity use and varies significantly with the electricity mix. Regarding truck operations, the study finds that connectivity services enable fuel consumption reductions that significantly outweigh the data center infrastructure’s burdens. The results show a resilient net-positive outcome, where the scale of climate benefits remains much larger than the impact of the required digital infrastructure, even under scenarios of significantly increased data demand. The study concludes that while vehicle connectivity introduces new material and energy demands, it can serve as a powerful tool for reducing the overall environmental footprint of the transport sector.