By Biju Varghese and Gururaj B Deshpande
New-age technologies are revolutionizing business, irrespective of industry or vertical, and leading to high levels of industrial growth. Parallelly, a key area of discussion is about balancing growth with sustainability with concerns being increasingly voiced on new-age tech per se is a threat to sustainability.
Interestingly, new-age tech and sustainability can be mutually complementary and not exclusive. Take Quantum Computing, for instance. As an emerging technology – that utilizes the laws of quantum mechanics to solve computational problems considered highly complex for classical computers – it can lead to new breakthroughs for a sustainable world given its ability to transform chemical engineering, material science, drug discovery, financial portfolio optimization, and more. It can be applied across industries, making it a versatile solution for organizations to reduce their environmental impact.
In the next five to seven years, we may experience the emergence of error-corrected, fault-tolerant quantum processors and see this development drive large-scale quantum computing adoption in real world applications. IDC forecasts the customer spend for quantum computing to grow from $412 million in 2020 to $8.6 billion in 2027. It also expects investments in this segment to reach nearly $16.4 billion by the end of 2027.
Devising a sustainable supply chain with Quantum Computing
In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, the resurgence of global supply chains has been a key driver for growth. However, the supply chain industry is under increasing pressure to reduce its carbon footprint and contribute to a more sustainable future. One area of focus is the reduction of CO2 emissions in transportation, which is responsible for a significant portion of greenhouse gas emissions.
Let’s look at how quantum computing can revolutionize an eco-friendly supply network. By identifying the most eco-friendly routes and transportation modes, it helps companies reduce their carbon emissions. For instance, a quantum computing solution developed recently significantly lowers CO2 emissions in supply chain transportation. It determines the most optimal supply chain routes from factories to end customers through storage depots while keeping CO2 emission minimal.
This highly disruptive solution helps in determining the optimal distribution strategy while adhering to the constraints of factory production capacities and depot throughputs, all while minimizing the total CO2 emissions generated during transportation. The solution has helped in selecting the most efficient routes, allocating products to specific depots, and deciding whether to ship products directly from factories to customers or route them through depots.
Industry-wide application of quantum computing for sustainability
Let’s look at some more quantum computing use cases in the sustainable domain.
- Tackling hunger: Quantum computing can be applied to improve catalysts used in ammonia production as it can optimize the energy-intensive process for producing ammonia. Finding a better catalyst can reduce the cost of the Haber-Bosch process by reducing the overheads necessary for heat and pressure in the reaction.
- High-energy density batteries: Batteries, sometimes referred to as “the new oil,” can be an effective replacement for fossil fuel in transportation and large-scale energy storage. Quantum computing can help in simulating the chemical properties of battery elements to achieve the optimal design, which has remained elusive so far.
- Renewal energy distribution: Renewable energy sources are intermittent; they supply electricity only, for instance, when the sun shines or wind blows. Thus, the reliable and efficient operation of the grid, which requires real-time decision making, is becoming an increasingly complex task that could be aided by quantum computing.
- Wind energy siting: Siting energy plants is a challenging computational task. For example, wind farms must be sited where wind flow is high and where the electrical grid is accessible. Quantum computing could solve location-allocation problems through new optimization methods of micro-siting for wind turbines.
- Water purification: In reverse osmosis water purification, quantum computers can promote the progress of membrane technology through quantum simulation. Quantum computers can also accelerate the use of heterogeneous catalysts, which could directly convert toxic molecules within the water into nontoxic products.
- Enabling hydrogen economy: The cost of hydrogen currently prohibits an efficient replacement of fossil fuel. The transition to the hydrogen economy will need generation, storage, and usage of hydrogen as a fuel. These are all areas where quantum modelling of chemical compositions of elements can raise efficiency and bring down the cost of production.
- Improving carbon capture: Quantum computing can help design new molecular structures for new adsorbents to capture carbon from different sources of emissions. Quantum algorithms could simulate all the physical and chemical mechanisms in these adsorbents’ basis their size, shape, and chemical composition, enabling the selection of the most efficient materials to develop.
- Promoting healthcare: Quantum computing can be applied to improve patient selection and design in clinical trials, generate new molecules faster than the traditional method with a desired set of biological properties, improve drug response prediction, and accelerate a drug’s time to market, even for diseases that haven’t found a treatment yet.
- Reducing methane emissions: A large part of annual greenhouse gas emissions come from cattle and other dairy sources. A futuristic solution to this may be an anti-methane vaccine that produces methanogen-targeting antibodies for livestock. Quantum computing can help researchers to find the right antibodies using precise molecule simulation.
Quantum computing and the future roadmap
Sustainability is one of the most important priorities for today’s organizations, but they need to take sustained efforts to adopt it. Quantum computing could be key to make our sustainability plans into reality. Organizations should invest into its use cases; this may lead to the faster development of solutions through early learnings and in realizing the true value of quantum computing to enable a significant positive effect on the environment.
As the world moves closer to the technological revolution driven by quantum computing, it is important to pay close attention to how this revolutionary technology can be leveraged for a greener future. Quantum technology can indeed lead to a quantum jump in sustainable benefits for organizations.
The authors are Biju Varghese, Client Technology Innovation & Incubation Lab leader, EY Global Delivery Services and Gururaj B Deshpande, Client Technology leader, EY Global Delivery Services, and the views expressed in this article are their own
