Air pollution mitigation strategies discussed
State officials assigned in the working group to reduce air pollution exchanged their opinions and ideas for tackling air pollution and improving the air quality in Ulaanbaatar.
“Expansion works aimed to increase thermal power supply to reduce air pollution have completely finished in the energy sector in 2017,” Head of the Department of Policy and Coordination at the Ministry of Energy B.Nasantogtokh reported at the beginning of the meeting.
“In 2017, we provided the opportunity for 23,000 families in ger areas to use electric heaters. A project to suspend the use of 105 thermal mass stoves was carried out. We will broaden electricity supply for 46,000 families living in ger areas stretching from Tavan Shar intersection to Dari-Ekh intersection and those living further north. So far, 23,000 families have gotten additional electricity supply. This project will cover areas from the National Center for Maternal and Child Health bus stop to Televiz terminal to Dambadarjaa bus terminal. Operations of 78 water heaters have been stopped in order to link them to the central power supply system. Around 70 percent of this area is occupied by schools, kindergartens and other public institutions. We plan to carry out two projects,” he said.
President of the Mongolian Academy of Science D.Regdel underlined that the most important task to do now is reducing heat loss. He suggested that improving insulation can help lower heat loss by up to two kilowatt per hour.
D.Regdel estimated that a family pays 118,300 MNT a month if electricity bills if they have a two-rate counter and 82,600 MNT a month if they receive nighttime electricity tariff discount.
“It’s necessary to build a factory for the production of a household two-kilowatt thermal accumulator, which we invented, so that it can be introduced to the market as broadly and quickly as possible. This accumulator gets fully recharged with almost 36 kilowatt during the nine hours of the nighttime discount period and allows you to not only get heating for 15 hours straight during the day but also cook. This has been proved with a trial in Ulaanbaatar and Tosontsengel soum (in Zavkhan Province),” he said.
The academician then talked about distributing a fullyautomated smart stoves in partial infrastructure centers with 50 households each.
“Using the smart stoves in the 3,800 partial infrastructure centers in Ulaanbaatar where around 190,000 families live will save 152,000 tons of coal in addition to reducing air pollutants by 20 times.”
Lastly, he stressed that it’s crucial to continuously address heating problems until it’s completely resolved and advised building a factory to manufacture stoves with full combustion domestically.
The meeting was concluded with the decision to form a sub working group for air pollution reduction.
Member of Parliament S.Byambatsogt, who proposed the idea, was fully confident that his proposal will bring better results to anti air pollution efforts.
“I believe that it’s best to create a sub working group that will rank project proposals by their urgency and effectiveness and determine which are more economically profitable,” he said. “We must set ambitious goals and commit to seeing them through,” he stated.