The Quantum Climate Opportunity: Modeling a Sustainable Future
The early months of this year have seen an alarming surge in climate extremes, from devastating wildfires in South America to record-breaking heat in January. The EU reported that global warming surpassed 1.5°C for the entirety of 2023, marking a significant milestone. Despite these alarming trends, there’s a concerning rollback of green policies and growing calls for reform in climate negotiations, which have seen sluggish progress over the years. These developments underscore the complexity of addressing the climate crisis. Achieving net-zero emissions will require leveraging a diverse array of new technologies, with quantum climate computing emerging as a crucial tool in this endeavor.
Time to start making an impact on net zero
The heart of today’s urgent environmental issues lies in pivotal questions within materials science, whether it’s enhancing renewable energy sources, refining energy storage through better batteries, or optimizing energy distribution networks. How do we enhance the capture, storage, and utilization of renewable energy? Can we innovate energy production processes for greater efficiency and reduce our dependence on rare minerals obtained through carbon-intensive mining?
Materials science heavily relies on modeling. To discover novel materials, we require robust systems that can efficiently model optimal options while swiftly discarding unsuitable ones. However, the capabilities of classical computers have limits when it comes to modeling materials. To fully unlock the potential of intricate structures, we must turn to quantum computing.
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Quantum computing’s role in achieving net zero
Think about the transition to renewable energy. Wind and solar power have reached a point where they’re cheaper than fossil fuels, but they’re intermittent and challenging to predict performance-wise. To fully harness their potential as replacements for traditional energy sources, managing fluctuations in both demand and supply is crucial.
Energy storage holds the key, yet current solutions are costly. Their expenses can exceed three times the costs of onshore wind and solar installations, negating the cost benefits of switching to renewables.
To lower energy storage costs and make renewables a viable option, we need batteries with higher energy density, which poses another hurdle. Assessing the energy density of potential battery materials requires extensive lab testing, making it impractical to evaluate numerous materials.
Quantum computing offers a solution. It can virtually simulate the energy densities of various battery materials accurately, eliminating the need for costly lab tests and physical materials. This could speed up material screening, focusing only on the most promising candidates for physical testing.
However, leveraging quantum computing’s full potential requires faster progress in near-term quantum hardware. The number of qubits, accuracy levels, and scalability must improve rapidly.
Alternatively, developing more efficient quantum algorithms is another path. Tailored algorithms for materials modeling have significantly reduced the cost of modeling battery cathode materials on quantum computers. These advancements bring modeling realistic materials within reach of near-term quantum computers, but further work is needed for substantial complexity reduction and demonstrating true quantum advantage in materials modeling.
Balancing urgency with innovation
Achieving net zero by 2050 instead of 2070 could lead to limiting warming to 1.5°C instead of 2°C, potentially saving tens to hundreds of thousands of lives annually.
For quantum computing to significantly impact this goal, we must propose new battery materials by 2030. However, experts predict that quantum computers may not operate at scale until at least 2040, possibly even later, a decade after the deadline.
Recent advancements in quantum algorithms for materials modeling have revealed that a full-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer may not be necessary to contribute to this objective. These developments have accelerated the timeline by a decade or more, demonstrating the crucial role of new algorithms in harnessing the potential of quantum computing for real-world applications.
This breakthrough marks progress toward bridging the gap between quantum’s potential and its practical applications.
However, substantial innovation in quantum computing algorithms and hardware is needed before this becomes a reality. Long-term investment and collaboration between the quantum community and practitioners are essential to speed up the development and deployment of breakthroughs that can facilitate a sustainable future.
Source – eetimes.eu
