Since the 1990s, the population of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia has nearly tripled. Unfortunately, due to a lack of conventional housing infrastructure in the city center, many new arrivals to Ulaanbaatar live in ger (also called “yurt” in Russian, lightweight, easy-to-assemble, tent-like dwellings traditionally used by nomads living a pastoral lifestyle) as permanent, fixed-location homes.
The informal, peri-urban ger districts surrounding the city are estimated to house about 60% of its residents. Unfortunately, this increase in population, coupled with these new settlement patterns, has contributed to a dramatic rise in air pollution. As a result, Ulaanbaatar is listed as one of the top five cities in the world with the worst air quality. In 2009 it was estimated that 10% of the total deaths in Ulaanbaatar are attributable to poor outdoor air quality, and in 2016 it was estimated that roughly 3,300 Mongolian people (or about 0.1% of the country’s total population) died from diseases attributable to poor indoor and outdoor air quality. Pollutants comprised of ultrafine particulate matter (PM 2.5) is one of the primary concerns in Ulaanbaatar. It has been estimated that burning solid fuels (e.g., coal, wood, trash, etc.) for domestic heating in ger districts accounts for 60% of the total PM 2.5 generation in Ulaanbaatar. Thus, reducing the PM 2.5 produced by ger households is acknowledged as a critical first step in addressing the pollution crisis in Ulaanbaatar.
Since 2017, the Center for Environmental Building and Design (CEBD) at the Stuart Weitzman School of Design at University of Pennsylvania has been studying and monitoring ger households in cooperation with Gerhub, UNICEF Mongolia, the Building Energy Efficiency Center (BEEC) at the Mongolian University of Science and Technology (MUST), and others.
Based on this research, it was concluded that the combination of thermally inefficient ger enclosures and the primary reliance on combustion for heating during the winter season were the main causes of the high indoor and outdoor PM 2.5 concentrations.
Thus, a primary focus of this research has been identifying thermal weak points in the typical ger enclosure and evaluating possible improvements alongside exploring alternate heating methods that could substantially decrease pollution from ger household and improve the overall indoor and outdoor air quality in ger districts and Ulaanbaatar as a whole. This document summarizes the key insights of that research and provides design recommendations for improving the thermal performance and indoor thermal comfort of Mongolian ger during the winter. Generally, improved thermal efficiency has a three-fold benefit for ger households:
- A more thermally efficient ger can be heated more consistently, meaning that it can be kept at comfortable indoor temperatures a greater percent of the time. More comfortable indoor temperatures have been linked with better occupant health and wellbeing.
- All other aspects considered equal, that is, to achieve a comparable level of indoor thermal comfort, a more thermally efficient ger uses less fuel, reducing its contribution to both indoor and outdoor air pollution.
- Finally, in optimal thermally efficient ger, heating by an electric heater instead of a combustion stove can be cost effective. Even though the electricity in Ulaanbaatar is mostly generated by coal-fired power plants, they produce much less environmental pollution than the collective effect of indoor combustion in households.
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