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ICQE 2025

Responsibility for Energy, Quantum, and the Future of Intelligence: ICQE 2025

The International Conference on Quantum and Energy (ICQE) 2025 brought together scientists, founders, policymakers, and technologists in Padua, a scientific city. The discussion focused on “What will it take to fuel the future of intelligence?”

The conference addressed the energy needs of future technologies, especially  artificial intelligence (AI), and explored how quantum technologies can help power this exponential growth without depleting the planet's energy infrastructure. ICQE 2025 anticipated the future would be created and asked if quantum might reduce energy demand.

The conference co-chair, Francesco Campaioli, stressed that “The cost of intelligence will ultimately be defined by the cost of energy.” He stressed that quantum technologies will be used to build future infrastructure, thus they must not reproduce exploitative tendencies. The seminar stressed sustainability in quantum technology development. A unified vision that balances scientific advancement with social and ecological responsibility requires multidisciplinary collaboration beyond specific knowledge.

See also QSC-Diffusion Models In Generative AI and Image Synthesis.

Energy System Quantum Role Three primary areas where quantum technology and energy intersected to potentially alleviate the AI-driven energy crisis and computational arms race were discussed at ICQE 2025:

Basic Understanding:

Quantum research deepens our understanding of physical phenomena and offers new, more effective, and fundamentally different heat management, dissipation, and control methods than previous designs. This is influencing quantum engine, thermodynamic protocol, and next-generation cooling ideas.

Efficient computation:

Quantum computing may improve environmental information processing. Certain efficient AI tasks could be offloaded from high-power GPUs to quantum processors because AI uses infinite energy. This ethic encourages sustainability and scalability.

Discovery of Materials

Finding, comprehending, and producing novel materials is aided by quantum sensing and modelling. Direct modelling and modification of quantum characteristics may speed up energy innovation in photovoltaics, solid-state batteries, and hydrogen catalysts. More clean materials would be available faster.

Quantum may not solve the energy dilemma, but intentional development, application, and expansion may make it one of its most powerful tools.

Signals from Italy:

A National Quantum Strategy At the conference, Italy presented its National Quantum Strategy for later this year. This created the Padua-based Italian Quantum Alliance. Italy's quantum science and technology are built by universities, research, and industry. Italy views quantum as a major scientific initiative that could impact energy, cybersecurity, infrastructure, and competitiveness.

Also see Quantum LiDAR Improves Sensor Remote And Noise Rejection.

Scientific Highlights Several ICQE 2025 presentations showed the field's scientific breadth and transdisciplinary rigour:

Cristiane Koch of Freie Universität Berlin developed a generic new way for cooling many-body quantum systems, needed for scalable quantum technology. This approach extracts energy by repeatedly coupling and resetting auxiliary qubits without system knowledge.

Jeremy Stevens (Alice & Bob) developed a power utilisation framework and showed compatibility with microwave and cryogenic equipment for superconducting cat qubits' energy efficiency.

Filippo Vicentini (École Polytechnique) noted that neural network-based variational methods for quantum simulation, especially for the quantum many-body problem, can outperform conventional methods despite rising entanglement.

Beatrice Donelli of CNR-INO Istituto Nazionale di Ottica presented a spin network-based quantum battery charging protocol that exploits quantum phase transitions for super-extensive precision. She optimised D-Wave Advantage quantum annealer performance utilising cooperative protocols.

Beatriz Polo Rodríguez (ICFO Barcelona) suggested the ergotropic gap as a potential entanglement witness, eliminating the requirement for costly quantum tomography. In Gaussian states, thermodynamic measures like energy and work can show quantum entanglement, she said.