English

Quantum technologies for climate change: Preliminary assessment

Quantum Physics 2021-07-13 v1

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.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2107.05362,
  title  = {Quantum technologies for climate change: Preliminary assessment},
  author = {Casey Berger and Agustin Di Paolo and Tracey Forrest and Stuart Hadfield and Nicolas Sawaya and Michał Stęchły and Karl Thibault},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2107.05362},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

10 pages, 1 table

R2 v1 2026-06-24T04:06:05.930Z