Turbine chief Alan Epstein

It’s fair to say that the environment and the aerospace industry are not the easiest of bedfellows.

But while many claim that the continued growth of aviation is simply incompatible with global emissions targets, others are more optimistic. And the decision by US jet engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney to combine responsibility for the environment with responsibility for technology indicates that, at the very least, industry is taking the issue seriously.

According to the man in the hot seat, Dr Alan Epstein — the firm’s vice-president of technology and environment — reducing emissions while advancing aerospace technology are actually mutually beneficial goals. ‘Pratt realised that the environment would move from being an issue of compliance to being something that differentiates the products and defines the future,’ he told The Engineer.

Earlier this year, we spoke to Rolls-Royce’s technology chief Prof Ric Parker: in some respects Epstein’s UK equivalent. Parker optimistically claimed that some of the industry’s biggest technical leaps are yet to come. But if he was positive on aviation’s ability to simultaneously grow and reduce its environmental impact, Epstein is bullish, and suggested that the ACARE targets — the European goals to halve CO2 and noise emissions by 2020 — are, if anything, not ambitious enough. ‘I think some of the estimates of efficiency potential are modest; we as an industry can probably do better. The ACARE goals to me are readily achievable.’

Indeed, Epstein — a former professor of aeronautics at MIT — believes that the company’s latest jet engine, the Purepower PW1000G, will meet the ACARE goals seven years early when it enters service in 2013. ‘We’re ahead of the game,’ he said, ‘it cuts NOx by 60 per cent compared to current engines; fuel consumption of the engine alone is 15 per cent better and noise is 20dB less, which if you look at impact on the ground is reduced by three-quarters.’