Today, in the era of active development of green energy, which has swept not only developed but also developing countries, traditional energy sources such as brown coal remain important in Mongolia – even though renewable energy sources are being developed in parallel in the country. The authorities of the country, where all major energy facilities were built by foreign (in this case Soviet) specialists many decades ago, have in recent years begun to turn their attention back to thermal power generation, abandoning utopian notions of renewable energy as a universal “panacea” capable of ridding the country of the threat of energy shortages without harming the environment.

Current status of the thermal power sector in Mongolia

Thermal power still dominates Mongolia’s energy mix, providing more than 80 per cent of the country’s electricity generation. The main fuel for all current Mongolian CHPs and TPPs is domestically mined coal.

There are nine relatively large CHPs and TPPs in the country, three of which are located in the capital city of Ulaanbaatar. They account for more than 70 per cent of the country’s electricity generation.

The country lacks the capacity of the existing thermal power facilities. In recent decades, no major facilities in this sector have been commissioned – Mongolia has, at best, limited itself to the reconstruction of existing ones.

The threat of energy shortages

While Mongolia’s electricity consumption is growing by 7-8 per cent annually, the growth in generating capacity is barely keeping pace, reaching at best 6 per cent per year. The country’s central energy system – with its three largest thermal power plants – is overloaded for the fifth year in a row, and the western energy system has to rely almost entirely on electricity supplies from Mongolia’s neighbours Russia and China. The same can be said for the southern neighbour of Mongolia, but only in relation to the country’s southern power system, which is under tremendous strain due to the rapid expansion of coal and copper mining at the country’s two largest deposits, Tavan Tolgoi and Oyu Tolgoi. The south of the country is less than 10 per cent self-sufficient in domestic power generation capacity. It is due........

© New Eastern Outlook