Combat air pollution in Mongolia

On an average day in Ulan Bator, Mongolia, the temperature does not exceed freezing and in winter it often drops to 40 degrees below zero on the Fahrenheit scale. Many Mongolian families, including most of the population of Ulan Bator, live in traditional huts called yurts or gers. To stay warm, ger dwellers typically burn raw coal in individual charcoal stoves, contributing to increasingly dangerous levels of air pollution throughout the city.

Three years ago, the Center for Environmental Building and Design (CEBD) at the Weitzman School of Design joined the Mongolian nonprofit GerHub to test ways to make ger living more energy efficient, in hopes of reducing the air pollution and reduce respiratory conditions in Ulan Bator. This work has since evolved into a series of collaborations with UNICEF Mongolia, the UNICEF Office of Innovation, design partners KieranTimberlake, The North Face and Arc’teryx, and the research of two faculty members from the Weitzman School, sponsored by the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy, on the long-term prospects of decarbonization in the city. The work included building gers in Ulaanbaatar and the Pennovation Center, and monitoring their performance. Last year, with the support of UNICEF, CEBD tested the efficiency of products and services for cooking, heating and insulation in ger environments in Bayankhongor, 400 miles outside the capital. UNICEF has just funded a fourth year of work that will focus on taking what the team learned there and applying it to the ger buildings in Ulaanbaatar.

“The thing that brought everyone to the table is the incredible pollution of Ulaanbaatar,” says Bill Braham, professor of architecture at Weitzman School and director of the CEBD. In contrast to major industrialized countries, burning coal for residential heating is the main culprit.

One of the team’s goals, heating a ger effectively and at a lower cost with electricity rather than coal stoves is possible, but not unhindered, says Braham. Mongolian families are used to buying fuel with “ready money,” Braham says. Although heating the home with electricity can save money over the course of a year, families could pay a higher monthly bill, not an easy fix. Furthermore, it is often difficult to connect the gers on the outskirts of Ulaanbaatar to the electricity grid. And even the grid itself is powered by burning coal, producing air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions on a larger scale.