With 31 of these 260-foot, or 79-meter, turbines made by General Electric, the Salkhit, or Windy, Wind Farm will be able to produce 50 megawatts of power when it goes online in early 2013. That is enough to supply Mongolia’s 860-megawatt central grid with approximately 5 percent of its energy needs
Inside a V.I.P. yurt near the turbines, Hulan Davaadorj, an investment analyst for Clean Energy, a unit of Newcom Group, gave a PowerPoint presentation to a group of visiting businessmen, outlining the details of the $120 million effort. Newcom Group is the company behind the wind farm project.
The eco-friendly plant about 45 miles, or 70 kilometers, from the capital, Ulan Bator, will save Mongolia 150,000 tons of coal and reduce carbon dioxide emissions 180,000 tons annually, Ms. Hulan said. It also brings the latest renewable technology to a country hamstrung by inefficient combined heat and power stations built by the former Soviet Union. Ulan Bator has two main coal-fired power stations, one built in 1965 and the other in 1984.
“This plant is needed because you cannot have development and growth without energy,’’ Ms. Hulan said. ‘‘The country is developing rapidly, so new energy will be the basis for this growth.”
Harnessing wind power is part of a new policy plan by the Mongolian government, which is looking for innovative ways to diversify into renewable energy, despite a wealth of coal reserves — Mongolia has about 100 billion tons of coal underground.
Earlier governments started small-scale renewable energy initiatives like the subsidized sale of solar panels to nomads, with assistance from the World Bank. The project brought solar panels to 100,000 herder families, who move three or four times a year across Mongolia’s grassy steppes and sunburned deserts.
The push to develop cleaner energy is fueled by an environmental disaster in Ulan Bator, identified by the World Health Organization as the world’s second-most polluted city, after Ahvaz in southern Iran.
According to a 2011 report by the World Bank, the population’s exposure to fine particulate matter in the city was, on average throughout the year, six to seven times as high as the most lenient World Health Organization targets.
That pollution is largely attributed to the tens of thousands of families living in slum areas called “ger districts,” where residents burn raw coal in winter to keep warm. Coal-fired power stations, exhaust from vehicles and dust from construction sites also contribute to the airborne particulate matter.
According to a study produced by the Public Health Institute of Ulan Bator, the number of people sickened by respiratory disease increased 45 percent between 2004 and 2008.
A 2011 study by Simon Fraser University in British Columbia reported that one in ten deaths in Ulan Bator can be attributed to air pollution.
“We live in a globalized world now, so whatever happens in other countries can affect Mongolia, and what happens here can affect other countries. So to reduce our carbon footprint, we need to use clean energy when we develop our new power sources,” Ms. Hulan said.
Renewable energy will not fix all of Mongolia’s problems. By nature, this type of power cannot provide a constant supply of electricity — the more heat- intensive coal plants must generate that. Wind power can contribute as much as 20 percent of the electricity in the central grid.
“Mongolia has tremendous potential for solar and wind, but this is something that has to be carefully approached because of the nature of renewables. They don’t provide the same reliability as more conventional sources of energy,” said Shane Rosenthal, deputy country director for the Asian Development Bank in Ulan Bator.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/04/business/energy-environment/severely-polluted-mongolia-tries-a-cleaner-power-source.html?partner=rss&emc=rss