[Stoves] Fwd: [climate and stove] Woes of the coldest capital city in the world

[Paul Anderson]

I hope that Crispin will comment on both the article and on Smith's 
introductory statement.

Paul


-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: 	[climate and stove] Woes of the coldest capital city in the world
Date: 	Fri, 16 Mar 2018 07:03:04 -0700
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Some of the worst air pollution in the world to be sure, during the 
winter  – indoors/outdoors it does not matter much because of the 
geography/meteorology that traps pollution near the ground in the 
winter.  Wish the NYT had spent a bit longer exploring what is actually 
being done to deal with this problem, however.  With Mongolian and US 
colleagues, for example, we conducted a study on the problem with a 
major paper produced last fall (reported in this listserver and 
available on my website below) with policy recommendations.  And since 
the fall have been working with Mongolian and Chinese colleagues in a 
pilot study with the Ministry of Energy of newly developed Chinese 
air-to-air heat pumps that work down to the minus 40 sometimes reached 
in UB.    These make electricity an affordable option, unlike what is 
said in the article.  With the ADB and others, we are working toward a 
much larger demonstration this coming winter.  Power of course is 
produced currently by coal, but in central facilities usually far from 
residential areas and thus with much less impact on health-damaging air 
pollution.  Over time, the power can be shifted to solar and wind and 
thus this solution is potentially sustainable. Other groups are actively 
working to examine different possible solutions, including synthetic 
natural gas made from coal/k     (It also seems the NYT could at least 
spell Ulaanbaatar correctly.)

Burning Coal for Survival in the World’s Coldest Capital

*Photographs and Text by BRYAN DENTON 
<http://www.nytimes.com/by/bryan-denton>, MARCH 15, 2018, NYT*

[This article has great photos -- see 
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/15/world/asia/mongolia-ulan-bator-coal.html]

ULAN BATOR, Mongolia — Mongolians have long relied on folklore to 
explain how miserably cold their winters are.

During the first of nine phases of winter — each composed of nine days, 
starting on Dec. 22 — it is said that vodka made from milk freezes. 
During the third set of nine days, when temperatures can hit minus 40 
degrees in both Fahrenheit and Celsius, the tail of a 3-year-old ox is 
said to fall off. Around the sixth set of nine days, which falls in the 
middle of February, roads are expected to re-emerge from underneath the 
ice and snow.

But for the nearly 1.5 million residents of the capital, Ulan Bator, the 
misery of winter is now defined almost singularly by the smoke rising 
out of the city’s chimneys. Since 2016, in addition to being the world’s 
coldest capital city 
<https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-coldest-capital-cities-in-the-world.html>, 
it has also had the distinction of being the one with the highest 
recorded levels of air pollution, surpassing notoriously polluted 
megacities like Beijing and New Delhi.

According to local government figures, around 80 percent of Ulan Bator’s 
air pollution is produced by just over half the population, living in 
the so-called ger districts in the north of the city, named for the 
traditional nomadic dwelling central to Mongolians’ herding lifestyle.

The ger, or yurt, is a circular tent comprising a single room, with a 
family’s bedding and furniture arrayed around the device that makes its 
simple architecture survivable in such a harsh climate: a stove. The ger 
can be packed onto a truck and set up within a few hours.

mute

In recent years, the predominantly lower- to middle-income migrant 
workers who reside in these unplanned districts have been burning over a 
million tons of raw coal per year.

With little work available in Mongolia’s smaller cities, hundreds of 
thousands have left behind the nomadic herding lifestyle in the hope of 
finding opportunities in the mineral boomtown that Ulan Bator has 
become. And they have settled in the ger districts, which have sprung up 
because of a lack of clarity about land ownership.

During the Communist era, land belonged to the state, but starting in 
1991, land was defined as belonging to the citizens of Mongolia, leading 
to confusion as newcomers to the city claimed land and demanded 
ownership of it.

In recent years, the predominantly lower- to middle-income migrant 
workers who reside in these unplanned districts have been burning over a 
million tons of raw coal per year. The heaviest use is during the winter 
when staying warm is a matter of survival as temperatures remain well 
below freezing for weeks at a time. Those who can’t afford coal often 
burn garbage, adding plastics and other pollutants into the soupy mix.

Coal smoke rose from a school’s coal boiler on the outskirts of Ulan 
Bator as two girls walked home after class last month.

As families huddle indoors, burning coal around the clock, sections of 
the city see their levels of fine particulate matter 
<http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs313/en/>, a pollutant, soar 
into the thousands. On Jan. 30, one station in Ulan Bator recorded a 
reading of 3,320 micrograms per cubic meter — 133 times what the World 
Health Organization considers safe 
<https://www.unicef.org/media/media_102683.html>, and more than six 
times what it considers hazardous.

In January, Prime Minister Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh announced that the 
transportation and use of raw coal in Ulan Bator would be banned 
starting in April 2019 as part of an effort to improve the city’s air 
quality.

Meantime, the government has been trying with its limited resources to 
put a dent in the problem. Subsidies have been offered to families for 
stoves that produce less pollution, and since January 2017, electricity 
in many of the city’s highest-polluting districts was made free at 
night, when pollution levels are at their most severe.

But the cost of electric heaters that can adequately heat a thinly 
insulated home in the cold of winter is far out of reach for many in the 
ger districts. Nonsubsidized electricity is more expensive than coal, 
and far less plentiful.

The planned ban on coal has raised eyebrows among miners and sellers who 
extract and transport truckloads of the freshly extracted fuel from the 
city’s Nalaikh area, which provides 75 percent of the coal burned in the 
ger districts.

Many are skeptical that Mongolia’s government will be able to enforce 
the ban.

“It’s a fairy tale,” said Khangai Unurkhaan, 25, who sells raw coal by 
the truckload at the Shar Khad market near the city center.

mute

An entire flatbed of a small truck — weighting 1.3 ton — is enough to 
last a single family roughly one month during the coldest four months of 
winter.

“There are thousands of families who mine, sell and burn coal in order 
to live,” added Mr. Unurkhaan, who had barely given his name before he 
was off to deliver to a client’s home his 1.3-ton load of coal, which at 
$65 to $75, depending on the quality of coal, lasts a family about one 
month, according to official estimates.

Already, the pediatric wards of hospitals have banks of nebulizers to 
treat the large variety of respiratory infections and viruses that 
become both chronic and dangerous during the winter months.

Because of the pollution, “a simple flu becomes a pneumonia or 
bronchitis very easily,” said Dr. Soyol-Erdene Jadambaa, an immunologist 
at the Batchingun allergy and immunology children’s hospital, a private 
clinic. “It requires long-term treatment.”

Pneumonia killed up to 435 children under the age of 5 in Ulan Bator in 
2015, according to Unicef 
<https://www.unicef.org/mongolia/Mongolia_air_pollution_crisis_ENG.pdf>.

“We need a completely new city,” said Batmend Shirgal, who was raised in 
Ulan Bator and is now an engineer at one of the city’s power plants, as 
his 2-year-old daughter helped her younger brother hold a nebulizer to 
his small face at the Seven Dwarfs Pediatric Clinic near Ulan Bator’s 
airport.

The family had lived year-round in a planned part of the city with 
municipal heating until last year, when both children suffered severe 
cases of pneumonia and were hospitalized. This winter, the family 
decamped to Nalaikh, 24 miles outside the city, where the air is cleaner 
despite the area’s being the primary source of Ulan Bator’s coal.

“If you take coal out of the ger, people will burn anything,” Mr. 
Shirgal said. “The tires on their cars, their neighbors’ fences. It’s 
hard to survive in minus 30 degrees.”

Kirk R. Smith, MPH, PhD <krksmith at berkeley.edu 
<mailto:krksmith at berkeley.edu>>

Professor of Global Environmental Health

Director, Collaborative Clean Air Policy Centre, Delhi

747 University Hall, School of Public Health

University of California Berkeley, 94720-7360 USA

510-643-0793; fax 642-5815

http://www.kirkrsmith.org/

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