Sustainable Energy for Industry 5.0: AI-Enabled Energy Management, AI Infrastructure, and the Energy Quadrilemma

The energy trilemma balances energy security, affordability, and environmental sustainability; adding social acceptability extends it to an energy quadrilemma. Industry 5.0 promotes human-centric, resilient, and sustainable industrial systems increasingly enabled by artificial intelligence (AI). Based on a structured search of Scopus and Web of Science (2015–2026), this narrative review uses the energy quadrilemma as an analytical lens to examine enabling technologies, Composite AI (integrating multiple AI paradigms), and the energy footprint and regulation of AI. The literature on the energy quadrilemma and Industry 5.0 appears to have developed largely independently. Identified field studies rely on data-driven AI alone, whereas multi-paradigm hybrids are documented mainly in simulation and pilot studies. The relationship is bidirectional: AI may support all four dimensions of the quadrilemma, yet the growing, geographically concentrated electricity demand of AI infrastructure, particularly data centres, can strain grid capacity, increase local electricity costs, and burden host communities. Energy and climate policies should therefore account for AI infrastructure as a source of electricity demand, rather than treating AI solely as an efficiency tool. The paper proposes a mapping between Industry 5.0 pillars and quadrilemma dimensions, introduces the concept of a net quadrilemma contribution, and outlines a research agenda.