Reducing environmental impact - Aviation
The European aviation industry has established a set of challenging
environmental goals for 2020.
Rolls-Royce is a key partner in ACARE
(the Advisory Council for Aerospace Research in Europe) which is
committed to achieving three goals for new aircraft technology
by 2020, compared to a benchmark large civil aircraft from 2000:
- Reducing CO2 emissions by 50 per cent per passenger kilometre.
- Reducing NOx emissions by 80 per cent.
- Reducing perceived aircraft noise by 50 per cent.
Each of these goals presents significant engineering challenges. Achieving all three goals on a single aircraft introduces a further step-change in difficulty - conventional engineering design indicates that decreasing CO2 for an engine is likely to increase NOx, whilst decreasing noise increases CO2. To deliver this complex optimisation, Rolls-Royce is having to develop novel engineering solutions outside conventional design thinking. The recently launched Environmentally Friendly Engine (EFE) programme is one vehicle we are using to evaluate these novel approaches.
The ACARE targets were set voluntarily by the European aviation industry and are broadly in line with USA research goals set by NASA.
