Can Quantum Computers Address the AI Energy Problem?

Source: Parham Pashaei | · QUANTUM COMPUTING REPORT · | March 28, 2025

It’s no secret that the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasing worldwide, but that comes at a cost that not many of us are thinking about: energy consumption and CO2 emissions. For example, each ChatGPT query consumes nearly 10 times as much electricity as a Google search and produces approximately 4.32 grams of CO2. As the AI industry searches for more sustainable and efficient ways to consume energy, quantum computers offer several solutions which the world should consider tomake AI energy consumption more efficient and sustainable.

AI needs data centres in order to function and, to support AI, data centres are consuming more energy now than ever. Barclay’s Research estimates that data centres account for 3.5% of US electricity consumption today. As the use of AI increases, data centre energy consumption is also predicted to grow. US data centre energy use could be above 5.5% in 2027 and more than 9% by 2030.

This trend is also being observed globally. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), in 2022, data centres consumed 1.65 billion gigajoules of electricity — about 2% of global demand.  That is a lot of power being used! By 2026, the IEA projects that data centres’ energy consumption will have increased by between 35% and 128%.

There is a clear power consumption challenge to be addressed. Within this power consumption challenge, quantum computers are emerging as a potential avenue to help achieve more efficient power consumption for AI computation.

But first, what are quantum computers? They are a fundamentally new type of computers that operate based on the principles of quantum mechanics. While classical computers use bits—represented as 0s and 1s—for computation, quantum computers use quantum states, known as qubits. Once we have a large number of these isolated quantum states connected well together, we may be able to solve some problems that cannot be solved by traditional computers. Quantum computers also provide a computing platform that is attractive for solving AI models.