Quantum computing is being heralded as a paradigm shifting new technology capable of serious disruption across industries. But, for quantum computing to secure its its place as a leading technology in the future, it will have to evolve to address the requirements of the future. Probably one of the single most important aspects of any future technology will be sustainability.  Energy consumption and environmental footprint are being monitored more closely than ever and these aspects can massively affect popular opinion and ultimately adoption of a new tech.

Thankfully for the industry, quantum computing is a technology that potentially offers a multitude of solutions to some of the most pressing issues around sustainability. By providing an exponentially more powerful computation platform, it can contribute to more efficient and cheaper problem solving, perhaps even tackling computationally intensive tasks related to climate change.  Although current quantum processors generally require resource intensive infrastructures, there is a massive drive to avert this, leading to innovations such as smaller more compact systems, room temperature QPUs. This all ultimately means greener tech, something that could spill over to competing computing technologies.

In this article we look at a few key areas where quantum computing is contributing to these various topics, ranging from applications in the energy sector and meteorology to the integration of technological innovations. 

Quantum computing for simulating weather forecasting:

Weather forecasting is computationally expensive, it’s based-on modelling phenomena that are dependent on multiple parameters that are linked in very complex ways.  Our current models are moderately accurate in short term but fail for medium- and long-term modelling. They also struggle to accurately describe extreme weather conditions, a topic becoming increasingly more important due to climate change. This makes for a very important and interesting topic to apply quantum computing.

There are already several ways of using quantum computing for weather forecasting. For example, a recent publication from the University of New South Wales describes a novel quantum algorithm capable of simulating flow patterns of a Navier-Stokes fluid. This is quite significant as although such simulations are widely used in meteorology and the aerospace industry, they are computationally intensive, and the speed up presented in the paper essentially highlights a very possible quantum advantage in our current weather modelling capabilities.  

Over the past few years, we have also seen research being directed towards using quantum computers to help understand and predict extreme weather conditions. A notable example of this is work being conducted on the D-wave quantum annealer, which has been applied to modelling the occurrence of heat waves using historical datasets. Although these preliminary findings where not 100% accurate, they did demonstrate a significant potential to forecast such events. 

Other examples of quantum computing used in meteorology have looked at combining the computational power of both quantum computing and machine learning. An obvious topic that we expect to see more of in the future especially considering the progress currently being made in quantum-ML algorithm development.

Interestingly, quantum computing applied to weather forecasting is not just confined to academia, it’s recently been flagged as one of the main components of a new centre of excellence launched by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF) in conjunction with Atos.  The centre is dedicated to high performance computing, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing applied directly to weather forecasting. Their goal is to leverage state-of-the-art computational resources to forecast the occurrence and intensity of extreme weather events and phenomena triggered by climate change. The centre of excellence will be directly supported by Atos experts and other technology partners who will collaborate with ECMWF research scientists to develop new techniques to support next-generation weather forecasting, help boost climate and weather discovery and innovation.

Quantum computing and the energy sector:

Another important focus area that is currently seeing the early stages of quantum computing adoption is in the energy sector. Again, this is mainly due to potential quantum advantage that current NISQ or the future platforms may provide. The energy sector, like meteorology, has many hard problems to solve and although the application of Quantum computing for solving such problems is still in an early phase it is gaining momentum.

For example, energy systems have a complex nature due to their structure and a large number of design or operational constraints. This makes energy system optimization a hard problem for most available algorithms and an ideal test bed for applying quantum computing. Recent research into this has already looked at topics such as optimizing facility location allocation, heat exchanger network management and unit commitment for power components. Although these initial results still showed a higher performance with classical cluster computers customized to these problems, in certain instances a quantum advantage was reported.

Other interesting research topics related to the energy sector include using quantum computers to accelerate the design and discovery of energy storage materials, a topic that has massively grown in just a few years. More exotic research along these lines has led to investigations into the possibility of a quantum battery, a theoretically proposed device that never loses its charge.

Innovation driving down costs and resource footprint

New and emergent technologies such as quantum computers require loads of innovation as they evolve, and one of the most exciting areas of this is in hardware development.

Currently the most widely used quantum computers (in terms of number and accessibility) are the superconducting QPU types. These require very low temperatures, and employ a large electronic measurement footprint, one of the major barriers to scaling up these systems. However, there is a massive push from both academia and industry to tacking this problem. Recent reports from both Intel and Microsoft indicate significant progress in Cryo-CMOS technologies that are expected to slash not only the operational costs but also the overall resource requirements of these systems, ensuring more compact, cheaper, and efficient systems.

Thanks to the wide variety of technological platforms being explored for quantum computing, there are also several alternatives to the cryogenic QPUs, namely photonic and ion traps. These systems are typically run at room temperature, do not require massive cryo-refrigeration, and have a smaller overall footprint, making them more eco-friendly.  Although the race to build the leading quantum hardware platform is in full swing, sustainability considerations are likely to be as importance as performance when it comes to popularity and adoption.

Building a sustainable quantum future together

 Ensuring the quantum computing industry remains aware of issues around sustainability is important and it requires awareness from not only the scientists and engineers building the technology, but the end users and prominent players that drive the industry. A recent documentary published by The Quantum Daily looks directly at this. The documentary sees an impressive collaborative effort that brings together industry experts and academics alike to explain and drive sustainability in quantum computing. The documentary looks at the challenge of minimizing quantum computing’s own potential environmental impact whilst ensuring the development of applications to address global sustainability issues is prioritized. 

It’s encouraging to see initiatives like this. It highlights the quantum computing industry’s awareness to key issues regarding sustainability, something that previous technologies failed to address and although quantum computing is still relatively new, there is a lot of evidence that it can be used to help build a greener cleaner quantum future.