In many parts of the world, air pollution is discussed as a policy problem, a climate problem, or a public-health problem. In Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, it is all of those at once – but it is also something much more immediate. It is a daily survival problem, especially in winter.
That is what makes the story of Ulaanbaatar so striking. It is not just a story about emissions, infrastructure, or technology. It is a story about how climate, poverty, migration, health, engineering, and human resilience collide in one of the coldest capitals on Earth. For readers interested in science, technology, climate adaptation, and the way complex systems shape ordinary life, this is exactly the kind of real-world problem worth paying attention to.
The coldest capital, and one of the most polluted
Ulaanbaatar sits around 1,300 metres above sea level in a valley on the Tuul River, and winter temperatures can fall below -35 °C. Its average yearly temperature is around -0.8 °C, which makes it colder on average than capitals such as Astana or Reykjavik.
That extreme cold has consequences. Around one million of the city’s 1.6 million residents live in traditional circular tents known as gers. During winter, many households rely on furnaces for heat, burning coal, wood, tyres, and even plastic. The smoke then becomes trapped in the valley, creating a severe air-pollution crisis.
The result is a devastating mixture of environmental necessity and structural failure. People are not burning dirty fuels because they are indifferent to pollution. They are burning them because winter in Ulaanbaatar is brutal, and heat is not optional.
Why this problem is bigger than individual behaviour
One of the most important things to understand about Ulaanbaatar’s pollution crisis is that it cannot be reduced to a simple moral story about personal choices. Many of the people now living in ger districts were once rural herders. Climate-related disasters, including drought and zud – the freezing of grazing land so severe that animals starve – pushed many of them toward the capital.
In other words, some of the very people now contributing to urban pollution are themselves victims of climate disruption. That is a powerful reminder that environmental problems rarely move in a straight line. Climate change can displace populations, displacement can increase pressure on fragile urban systems, and those systems can then generate new environmental and health harms.
This is exactly the kind of interconnected reality that InsightArea keeps returning to: complex problems rarely stay in one category. They move across science, economics, public health, engineering, and human life.
A physicist returns home to solve a real problem
At the centre of this story is Unurbat Erdenemunkh, a former experimental physicist who returned to Mongolia after working in medical research abroad. After years in labs, including work related to proton therapy for cancer treatment, he chose to redirect his efforts toward a problem affecting his home city directly.
In 2022, he co-founded URECA – Universal Renewable Energy Certificate Accreditor – together with fellow Mongolians Orchlon Enkhtsetseg and Amar Baatartsogt. Their goal was not abstract climate branding. It was to build practical climate solutions for Central Asia, starting with one of the most urgent and visible crises in Mongolia.
The Coal-to-Solar idea
URECA’s flagship project is called Coal-to-Solar, or C2S. The idea is both simple and ambitious: replace coal-based heating in ger households with a cleaner hybrid system built around solar panels, batteries, electric heating, and smart monitoring.
The company installs solar panels, an electric heater, batteries, and a smart meter that tracks performance. The system is also backed by the electrical grid, which matters because outages are not uncommon. Heat storage in bricks and energy storage in batteries can help households manage for several hours even without grid support.
This is not just a technical retrofit. It is a redesign of how warmth, energy, and household stability can work under extreme climate conditions.
What makes the project meaningful
The most compelling part of the story is not the equipment itself. It is the evidence that the system appears to be changing everyday life in concrete ways. According to URECA, none of the 80 families in the pilot programme has burned coal in the past three years. The company plans to expand the programme to 180 families and aims to scale much further.
That matters for at least three reasons.
First, it reduces exposure to soot and dangerous indoor pollution. In a city where respiratory illness is a serious concern and where air pollution has been linked to large-scale health harm, cleaner heating is not a luxury upgrade. It is a public-health intervention.
Second, it changes how time is used inside the home. Households no longer need to spend as much effort fuelling and maintaining coal stoves. That frees up energy for work, study, and ordinary life.
Third, it creates a different economic horizon. In warmer months, families may be able to sell excess electricity back to the grid, helping offset winter costs. If that model works at scale, clean energy stops being framed only as sacrifice or compliance. It becomes materially useful.
Insulation matters as much as energy generation
Another detail that deserves attention is insulation. URECA is not treating the problem as if solar panels alone will solve it. The company also improves the thermal performance of gers by adding extra felt layers, insulating the skirt where the tent meets the ground, and reinforcing the roof and door.
This is a good example of something broader in science and engineering: elegant solutions usually depend on systems thinking. If a structure loses heat rapidly, then cleaner heating alone will always be less effective. By improving insulation, URECA is addressing the full energy logic of the home rather than one isolated piece of it.
That kind of thinking – practical, interdisciplinary, rooted in real constraints – is often what separates symbolic solutions from working ones.
Technology is only part of the story
One reason this story is especially powerful is that it does not present technology as magic. The project depends on trust. Families had to be willing to adopt an unfamiliar system. The work also depends on funding, infrastructure, maintenance, and long-term economic viability. Even the hope of future carbon credits is part of a broader chain that has to function properly for the model to scale.
And yet, this is also why the story feels hopeful. It shows what can happen when scientific knowledge, local commitment, and practical design are brought together around a specific human need.
Davaajargal, a single mother who joined the programme early, described being tired of dealing with coal and soot. After switching to the renewable-energy system, her home became cleaner, her family no longer had to manage the stove in the same way, and she was able to focus on her work as an artist. That is the kind of change that statistics alone cannot fully capture.
Why this story belongs on InsightArea
InsightArea is interested in the space where science, human life, technology, and complex reality overlap. Ulaanbaatar’s pollution crisis is not just an environmental headline. It is a case study in how difficult problems actually work.
It shows how climate events can reshape migration. It shows how infrastructure failure becomes a health crisis. It shows how traditional ways of living can be strained by modern pressures without losing their cultural meaning. And it shows how one scientifically trained person can return home and try to build something useful in the middle of that complexity.
There is something deeply valuable in stories like this. They remind us that science is not only about theories, papers, or laboratory precision. It is also about understanding the world clearly enough to intervene where intervention matters.
A cleaner future, if scale becomes real
The big question, of course, is scale. A pilot involving 80 families is meaningful, but Ulaanbaatar’s air-pollution crisis is massive. The city’s ger districts include hundreds of thousands of households, and structural change at that level is never easy.
Still, working pilots matter. They make a problem more concrete. They test whether a better model is technically possible, socially acceptable, and economically realistic. In that sense, Coal-to-Solar is more than a local clean-tech initiative. It is a live experiment in whether a city trapped between climate vulnerability and toxic winter dependence can carve out another path.
And that is a story worth following.
Author note: Costin Liculescu writes at InsightArea about science, technology, rational thinking, and complex real-world problems explained clearly.
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