{"id":49604,"date":"2026-09-20T02:07:44","date_gmt":"2026-09-20T00:07:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/?p=49604"},"modified":"2026-09-20T02:07:48","modified_gmt":"2026-09-20T00:07:48","slug":"ulaanbaatar-air-pollution-home-insulation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/environment\/ulaanbaatar-air-pollution-home-insulation\/","title":{"rendered":"Keeping the heat in: Mongolia’s overlooked answer to Ulaanbaatar’s air pollution"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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In Ulaanbaatar’s ger districts, winter air pollution is usually discussed in terms of what households burn to keep warm. But after eight years of working on residential energy efficiency in Mongolia, GERES argues that another question is just as important: how much heat do those homes need in the first place? Its experience with insulation, green finance and climate adaptation shows how heat loss is connected to a much wider set of challenges around housing, health, finance and urban policy.<\/em><\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When temperatures in Ulaanbaatar fall towards -40\u00b0C, keeping a poorly insulated house warm can become a relentless task. Heat escapes through roofs, walls and foundations, as well as windows and doors. Stop heating, and the indoor temperature can fall rapidly. Keep heating, and households must consume more fuel simply to maintain reasonable thermal comfort.\u201c<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read more on Novastan<\/strong>: \u201cHeritage is something alive\u201d: Ganzorig Miimaa reimagines Mongolia through photography<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is an everyday reality in the Mongolian capital’s sprawling ger districts, where traditional gers stand alongside detached houses, many of them self-built or constructed incrementally. Nearly 200,000 households – almost half of all households in Ulaanbaatar – live in these areas, according to GERES.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For years, the consequences have been visible in the city’s winter air. Mongolia banned raw coal in Ulaanbaatar in 2019, replacing it with processed briquettes and promoting other heating alternatives. Before the ban, raw-coal burning for heating in ger districts was estimated to contribute up to 80% of the capital’s winter air pollution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A detached house in Ulaanbaatar before and after energy-efficiency renovation. Better insulation reduces heat loss and the amount of energy households need to stay warm during the city’s long, extremely cold winters. Photo: GERES<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But the French NGO GERES has approached the problem from another direction. Rather than looking only at the fuel being burned or the technology used to generate heat, it has spent eight years asking how much energy a house requires in the first place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Novastan submitted written questions to GERES Mongolia, which were answered with contributions from Davaajargal B., Deputy Project Manager for the SOAP II and FRESH projects, and Quentin Moreau, GERES Regional Director.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“One important lesson from our work over the past eight years is that we cannot consider the heating system and the building itself separately,” GERES told Novastan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A more efficient stove, a different fuel or a transition towards renewable energy can reduce emissions. But without an efficient building envelope<\/strong>, much of the heat produced will still escape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“You can improve a stove, change the fuel, introduce a more efficient heating technology, or even transition to cleaner energy such as renewables. But if the heat immediately escapes through the roof, walls, windows and doors, a large part of that investment is lost.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reducing energy demand before changing the energy source<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This principle lies behind Switch Off Air Pollution<\/strong>, or SOAP, which GERES and its partners began implementing in Mongolia in 2018. Its second phase, SOAP II, ran from 2022 to 2026 with support from the European Union’s SWITCH-Asia programme and other partners, combining home insulation, professional training, green finance and renewable-energy solutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The premise is relatively simple: improving a house’s thermal performance<\/strong> reduces its underlying energy demand. A household consequently requires less fuel to achieve the same indoor temperature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Insulation being installed in the roof space of a detached house. Roofs are among the major pathways for heat loss in poorly insulated homes. Photo: GERES.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In practice, that can mean intervening across almost the entire building envelope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The building envelope is often poorly insulated,” GERES explained. “Roofs, walls, foundations, windows and doors can all become significant pathways for heat loss.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to winter monitoring data provided to Novastan by GERES, fully insulated houses have recorded reductions in energy consumption of up to around 50%, depending on the house and level of insulation. Insulated houses used, on average, 2.7 tonnes less fuel annually than non-insulated houses, GERES says, corresponding to an estimated reduction of approximately five tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions per household.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Households have also reported more stable indoor temperatures, less frequent stove firing, lower fuel consumption and less smoke and dust inside their homes. Some reported fewer winter-related illnesses among family members, less absenteeism from work and school and lower health-related expenditure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read more on Novastan<\/strong>: \u201cMongolia cannot be understood through one lens\u201d: Dr. Mendee Jargalsaikhan on democracy, China and Central Asia<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

These latter observations are self-reported rather than evidence establishing a direct causal relationship between insulation and improved health. But they illustrate why GERES increasingly sees thermal renovation as extending beyond energy efficiency alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the thermal performance<\/strong> of the house improves, the organisation argues, households are also better positioned to adopt cleaner heating technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“A cleaner heating system is much more effective when the house itself does not require excessive amounts of heat,” GERES said. “So we see insulation as creating a platform for the transition to cleaner energy, rather than as an alternative to that transition.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The distinction is important. Insulation is not being proposed as a substitute for cleaner energy. It reduces the amount of energy that any heating system must provide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the households that need insulation cannot afford it<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is, however, a fundamental problem. A renovation that saves money and energy over the long term still requires money upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SOAP II has worked with commercial banks and non-bank financial institutions to develop green financing for household renovation. By the end of the project, it had worked with five banks and three non-banking financial institutions on green-loan products, including offers with annual interest rates of 6%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet GERES’s experience also exposed a significant access-to-finance gap<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The households that were most vulnerable were often precisely those who could not qualify for a loan,” the organisation said. “They might have irregular or low incomes, insufficient collateral, or an already high income-to-debt ratio.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The result is a difficult paradox: households for whom lower heating expenditure could matter most can be among those least able to finance the investment required to achieve it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One response has been GERES’s Simple Solutions<\/strong>, or do-it-yourself, campaign. Rather than expecting a household to move directly from no insulation to a comprehensive renovation, the programme provides an incremental entry point into energy efficiency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Residents have been trained to implement relatively simple measures themselves using affordable and locally available materials, while trained households and local volunteers can pass that knowledge to their neighbours. The project developed 14 simple insulation solutions addressing heat loss through windows, doors, floors, walls, roofs and chimneys. Implemented together, GERES says, they can reduce household heat loss by up to 16%. By the end of SOAP II, 4,481 households had adopted energy-saving improvements and 660 had received support for roof insulation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The approach is deliberately progressive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Once households implemented even relatively simple insulation measures, they could directly feel the difference – the house was warmer, the indoor temperature was more stable, and the living environment was more comfortable,” GERES explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That experience could then encourage deeper renovation later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For GERES, however, do-it-yourself insulation does not eliminate the financing problem. Instead, its experience points towards a blended financing approach<\/strong> capable of recognising different household income levels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Commercial green loans can work for households with sufficient borrowing capacity. Lower-income households may require concessional finance, guarantees or derisking mechanisms<\/strong>, while the most vulnerable may need targeted subsidies or direct public support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Energy efficiency may generate future savings and wider social benefits, but that does not make the initial investment affordable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Building a renovation market<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Financing households is only one side of the equation. Mongolia also needs companies and craftspeople capable of carrying out energy-efficient renovation at sufficient scale and quality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Across the two SOAP phases, more than 320 micro, small and medium-sized enterprises have been trained, according to GERES.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Workers carry out energy-efficiency renovation on a detached house in Mongolia. GERES says technical standards, trained contractors and quality assurance are essential if the renovation market is to expand. Photo: GERES<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But training construction workers alone does not create a functioning renovation market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“There needs to be demand from households, suitable financial products, reliable technical standards, appropriate materials, qualified companies that can deliver good-quality work at a reasonable price, and a clear pathway for households throughout the renovation process – from energy assessment and financing to selecting service providers and ensuring quality,” GERES said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Quality assurance<\/strong> is particularly important.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Insulation is not simply a matter of attaching material to a wall or roof. The material used, installation methods, junctions between parts of the building envelope and construction details all influence the resulting thermal performance and environmental footprint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

GERES has therefore tested the Dulaan Shiidel<\/strong> delivery model, conceived as a one-stop-shop<\/strong> bringing together the different actors involved in renovation and providing households with a clearer pathway through the process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a mature version of such a system, a household would not have to become an energy-efficiency expert simply to renovate its home. A one-stop-shop could assess the building, identify an appropriate renovation package, explain costs and benefits, connect the household to suitable financing, identify qualified contractors and help ensure the quality of the completed work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not every house requires the same intervention, and not every household can afford comprehensive renovation immediately. The system would therefore also need to allow households to move progressively towards deeper renovation as their financial capacity permits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For GERES, the distinction is crucial. Mongolia does not simply need more internationally financed insulation projects. It needs an energy-efficient renovation market<\/strong> capable of functioning beyond them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not every Mongolian city is Ulaanbaatar<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SOAP II has already begun testing whether the approach can travel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Darkhan-Uul province, around 30 insulation brigades were trained and more than 100 households completed insulation improvements. The project also developed a replication toolbox covering technical guidance, implementation methodologies and good practices for detached-house insulation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But replication does not mean simply exporting an Ulaanbaatar template.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Secondary cities can share many of the capital’s challenges – detached houses, severe winters, high heating costs, varying construction quality, air pollution and households with limited resources for renovation – while differing significantly in their housing stock, energy infrastructure, fuel availability, construction practices, social fabric and household incomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The underlying principles are transferable, but the exact solutions cannot simply be copied from Ulaanbaatar,” GERES said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That experience is increasingly travelling much further than Darkhan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through FRESH<\/strong>, GERES is drawing on market-intermediation approaches developed under SOAP in Mongolia and its low-energy-consumption housing work in Tajikistan in very different climatic contexts, including Morocco and Benin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The transferable element is not a particular insulation material or heating system. It is the combination of technical, social and financial intermediation<\/strong> required to connect demand with appropriate services and financing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

GERES also identifies a common problem across these contexts: existing and often self-built housing can constitute a blind spot for building regulation and public policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Experience elsewhere is, in turn, influencing the way GERES looks at Mongolia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From extreme cold to extreme heat<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Climate change is complicating the technical problem that Mongolian housing must solve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Homes designed principally around surviving extreme winter cold may increasingly have to manage the opposite problem as well: indoor overheating during hotter summer periods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That requires thinking not only about keeping heat inside in January but also about passive cooling<\/strong>: strategic thermal mass, shading, cross-ventilation and reflective building envelopes that can limit heat gain without creating dependence on energy-intensive air conditioning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The challenge also extends beyond individual buildings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read more on Novastan<\/strong>: Bolor Lkhaajav: \u201cMongolia does not need to choose between Russia and China\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Experience from FRESH in Benin and Morocco has highlighted how exposure to extreme temperatures interacts with the surrounding urban environment. Nature-based solutions, urban greening, heat-action planning and early-warning systems<\/strong> can complement physical interventions at building level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Applied to Mongolia, this perspective makes the ger districts more than an insulation problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Access to urban infrastructure and services, tenure security<\/strong>, urban planning and building regulation can influence whether households can or will invest in improving their homes. Urban climate-mitigation goals can affect the deployment of clean energy, while regulations designed around conventional construction may not adequately account for the characteristics of self-built housing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Flood risk adds another layer. GERES points to rapid and unplanned urban growth on sloping terrain, combined with intense summer rainfall, as a reason future housing development may need to combine thermal renovation with integrated drainage, permeable-surface design and slope stabilisation<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Energy efficiency therefore becomes part of a broader question: what constitutes adequate and climate-resilient urban housing in Mongolia?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mongolia and Europe: knowledge travelling both ways<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

European cooperation has played an important role in GERES’s work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In June 2025, GERES organised a study visit to France and Belgium for Mongolian policymakers and housing-sector stakeholders under SOAP II and FRESH. The visit focused on thermal renovation, insulation, sustainable finance and institutional approaches to the energy transition in housing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

GERES points to European institutions and models as potential references for Mongolia. France’s Agence nationale de l’habitat (ANAH)<\/strong> and local energy and climate agencies offer examples of institutional structures supporting renovation and one-stop-shop delivery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

European experience also provides possible models for blended finance<\/strong>, combining public support and private capital to derisk investment, alongside green credit lines and loan-guarantee structures. Energy audits, passive insulation standards and thermal performance certification<\/strong> are other areas where European technical experience can be relevant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

GERES also cites Energiesprong<\/strong>, an approach based on standardised and prefabricated renovation systems and long-term energy-performance guarantees, as a potential reference for aggregating demand and reducing costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the organisation stresses that knowledge can travel in the opposite direction too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mongolian partners have accumulated experience implementing low-cost and rapidly deployable thermal retrofits in detached and self-built housing under severe budget constraints. Community mobilisation around household renovation could offer lessons for European programmes struggling with low uptake or owner hesitation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ulaanbaatar’s extreme winter conditions also provide a demanding environment for understanding thermal boundary performance, vapour-barrier behaviour and passive heating and cooling strategies<\/strong> under severe temperature fluctuations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The relationship is therefore not simply one of European expertise being transferred to Mongolia. As energy poverty and climate adaptation become more prominent concerns elsewhere, some of the practical solutions being tested in Mongolia may become increasingly relevant outside the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scaling the system<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After eight years, one of the hardest assumptions to overturn, according to GERES, has been that energy-efficient housing will naturally become a priority once people understand its benefits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It has not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For households, insulation competes with food, transport, education and other immediate expenses. Even when residents understand that renovation could make their homes warmer and reduce energy consumption, a substantial upfront investment can be difficult to justify when the financial payback is delayed. Coal subsidies can further distort that calculation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For banks and other financial institutions, detached-house insulation can involve relatively small loans but comparatively complicated assessment and monitoring. The administrative process may not be very different from that required for a much larger green investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For construction companies, meanwhile, demand remains dispersed and uncertain. Without a predictable pipeline of work, companies have less incentive to invest in specialised workers and develop dedicated renovation businesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And for policymakers, changing the fuel or heating technology can appear more immediate than improving the underlying thermal performance of hundreds of thousands of individual homes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“So perhaps the biggest lesson is that energy-efficient housing is not just a technical issue,” GERES told Novastan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It is simultaneously a household affordability issue, a financial-sector issue, a construction-market issue and a policy issue.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moving from thousands of retrofits to hundreds of thousands would consequently require more than another project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At policy level, GERES argues that Mongolia needs a long-term national framework addressing the energy performance of existing detached houses<\/strong>, rather than requirements focused only on new buildings. Such a framework would need clear technical standards, quality requirements, incentives and responsibilities for national and local authorities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At financing level, no single instrument will be sufficient. Commercial green loans can serve households capable of borrowing, while lower-income and vulnerable households will require some combination of concessional finance, guarantees, targeted subsidies and blended financing. Domestic public resources could also be combined with international capital to create a larger and more durable financing mechanism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The construction sector would require a much larger pool of qualified workers and companies capable of delivering renovation consistently and to appropriate standards. That means training, certification, quality assurance<\/strong>, access to appropriate materials and, crucially, predictable demand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the process would have to become much simpler for households.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“A household should not have to become an energy-efficiency expert, find a contractor, understand technical standards, search for financing and manage the renovation process completely on its own,” GERES said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A functioning one-stop-shop could instead guide households from the initial energy assessment through the choice of renovation package and financing to contractor selection and quality control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a city where winter air pollution has long focused attention on what hundreds of thousands of households burn to stay warm, this amounts to a significant shift in perspective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The challenge is no longer simply to demonstrate that insulation works, nor to choose between insulation and cleaner heating. It is to create the financing, skills, standards, institutions and market capable of making both work together on a national scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As GERES put it: “We have to scale the system itself.”<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Mathieu Lemoine, Editor-in-Chief for Novastan English.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Ulaanbaatar’s ger districts, poorly insulated homes consume enormous amounts of energy during Mongolia’s long winters. After eight years of retrofitting detached houses, GERES explains how insulation, green finance and a growing renovation market could help tackle air pollution, energy poverty and climate vulnerability.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":358,"featured_media":49606,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4667,4],"tags":[4087,5074,4954,5072],"coauthors":[358],"class_list":["post-49604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environment","category-kazakhstan","tag-central-asia","tag-geres","tag-mongolia","tag-ulaanbaatar"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/358"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49604"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49604\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49613,"href":"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49604\/revisions\/49613"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49604"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=49604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}