Quantum computing for clean energy innovation

英国政府于2023年初推出的“为英国供电”行动计划以净零战略为基础，为该国的绿色能源转型制定了明确的方向。在行动计划中，增加使用可再生能源和提高能源储存能力是实现净零排放的关键机制。然而，在目前的技术水平下，支撑这一转变的技术（从风力涡轮机到太阳能电池板和电动汽车电池）都严重依赖于少量所谓的“关键材料”（通常仅由少数国家生产，供应有限）。这在可获得性和可负担性方面都构成了风险，这可能会影响向低碳经济的成功过渡。对新材料的发现和已知材料的表征的研究可以追溯到几十年前，并使太阳能电池等突破性技术得以发展（最初是在19世纪80年代基于对硒的了解而开发的，然后在20世纪50年代随着对硅的性质的理解而改进）。然而，近年来，材料建模的技术要求变得更加严格，使得许多现有的计算工具无法满足用户的需求。因此，材料发现已经成为一项极具挑战性和成本高昂的工作，依赖于不准确的建模和昂贵的实验。通过之前的项目中进行的工作，Phasecraft已经表明量子计算机可以彻底改变这种范式，并且这可以在短期内完成（当量子计算机预计是小规模和噪音）。事实上，通过使用专有的量子计算技术和算法，Phasecraft已经展示了如何更快地以更高的精度对工业感兴趣的材料进行量子化。Phasecraft过去的工作主要集中在选定的材料类别上。但是Phasecraft的底层算法和量子软件管道很容易适应与能源部门相关的更广泛的材料类别。经典模拟中的挑战性质在许多能源材料中是相似的，因此量子模拟能够改变该领域的材料发现过程。这可能最终导致新材料的识别，或重新审视由于经典模拟中的近似而被忽视的材料，从而在提供能源安全和净零所需的材料改进方面发挥重要作用。

The 'Powering Up Britain' action plan launched in early 2023 by the UK government builds on the net zero strategy and sets clear directions for the country's green energy transition. Increased use of renewable energies sources and better energy storage capacities feature prominently in the action plan as key mechanisms to deliver Net Zero. However at the current state of the art, the technologies underpinning this transition (from wind turbines to solar panels and batteries for electric vehicles) are all heavily reliant on a small number of so-called 'critical materials' (typically only produced by a small number of countries and in limited supply). This poses a risk in terms of both availability and affordability, which could potentially compromise the successful transition to a low-carbon economy.Research into the discovery of new materials and the characterisation of known ones goes back many decades, and has enabled the development of ground-breaking technologies such as solar cells (first developed in the 1880s based on knowledge of selenium and then improved in the 1950s with the understanding of the properties of silicon). In recent years, though, the technical requirements for materials modelling have become much more stringent, making many of the existing computational tools unable to satisfy the users' requirements. Therefore, materials discovery has become an extremely challenging and costly exercise, relying on a combination of inaccurate modelling and expensive experiments.Through work undertaken in previous projects, Phasecraft has shown that quantum computers could change this paradigm drastically, and that this could be done in the near term (when quantum computers are expected to be small-scale and noisy). Indeed, through the use of proprietary quantum computational techniques and algorithms, Phasecraft has demonstrated how to characterise faster and with (much) greater accuracy materials of interest to industry.Past work from Phasecraft has focused on selected classes of materials. But Phasecraft's underlying algorithms and quantum software pipeline are readily adaptable to broader classes of materials relevant to the energy sector. The nature of the challenges in the classical simulation is similar across many energy materials, hence the significance of quantum simulation's ability to transform the materials discovery process in this sector. This could ultimately lead to the identification of new materials, or the revisiting of materials that have been overlooked due to approximations made within classical simulation, thus playing an important role in delivering the materials improvements needed to deliver energy security and net zero.