Quantum technologies for climate change: Preliminary assessment

Abstract

Climate change presents an existential threat to human societies and the Earth's ecosystems more generally. Mitigation strategies naturally require solving a wide range of challenging problems in science, engineering, and economics. In this context, rapidly developing quantum technologies in computing, sensing, and communication could become useful tools to diagnose and help mitigate the effects of climate change. However, the intersection between climate and quantum sciences remains largely unexplored. This preliminary report aims to identify potential high-impact use-cases of quantum technologies for climate change with a focus on four main areas: simulating physical systems, combinatorial optimization, sensing, and energy efficiency. We hope this report provides a useful resource towards connecting the climate and quantum science communities, and to this end we identify relevant research questions and next steps.

Quantum technologies need a Quantum Energy Initiative

“…I have voluntarily left aside the potential of quantum computers to solve energetic problems and bring solutions to the climate change [63]. These considerations, however, must be taken into account by society to assess how much it wants to invest in quantum technologies.…”

Biology and medicine in the landscape of quantum advantages

“…On the hardware side, stiff competition between quantum approaches [12] and their classical counterparts [16,18,449,450,451], and the potential that decoherence may not be tamed, together leave open the possibility that large quantum advantages or fault tolerant quantum computers may not be possible. However, a diverse and growing body of evidencefrom recent work on novel, more efficient error correcting codes [136,141], to the identification of significant operational quantum advantages in the energy required to perform computations [18,19] -gives much reason for optimism.…”

“…Since then, various implementations of the VQE approach have been used to simulate molecular binding [174] and dissociation [175,176], dipole moments [177], chemical reactions [178], and other quantum mechanical systems and their quantities. So far, these practical implementations have all focused on simple molecules with relatively few atomic nuclei 19 -simulations that are classically tractable (and with greater accuracy). These molecules include multiple hydrides, such as ones of beryllium (BeH2) [180] and sodium, rubidium, and potassium (NaH, RbH, and KH, respectively) [181].…”

“…2 While each experiment represents a state-of-the-art demonstration of the capabilities of quantum devices, they are not without limitations. For example, whether the classical simulation performed in [12] constitutes the practical limit of classical computation has been contested [16,17], although recent work has shown substantial advantages in energy consumption for the specific experiment [18] (and in general [19]). Further, while the superconducting devices in [12,14,15] are programmable, the photonic device in [13] was i) hard-coded to perform the specific task and ii) a Gaussian boson sampler (GBS) implementing a limited, non-universal model of quantum computation.…”

Exploring the Role of ICCT Underlying Technologies in Environmental and Ecological Management

“…The speed of quantum computers are several million times of the speed of supercomputers (supercomputers operate at a speed of the order of several hundred petaflops). The role of quantum computers in Environmental and ecological management include: (i) Quantum computers are potential machines for innovative climate change solutions through the simulation of quantum-level atomic interactions, could pave the way to discovering a new catalyst for carbon capture, heralding a new era of scrubbing carbon directly out of the air [45].…”