ULAANBAATAR, Mongolia – February 14, 2014 – The Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) has completed a 12-month collaborative project to develop and evaluate new strategies to reduce Mongolia’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

The project—Strategies for Development of Green Energy Systems in Mongolia—aimed to promote green energy systems that will lower emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in Mongolia as well as improve air quality, employment, and energy security.

The project team first gathered information about Mongolia’s energy needs, resources, and infrastructure and used that information to develop a quantitative computer model of Mongolia’s current energy use and GHG emissions. The team then used the model to develop four scenarios for Mongolia’s potential energy future and GHG emissions through 2035:

• A Reference scenario, based on continued use of coal-based energy to support a rapidly expanding economy driven by coal and copper exports, projected a greater than 200 percent increase in energy use with nearly fourfold growth in annual GHG emissions.
• A Recent Plans scenario incorporated expanded hydroelectric power, new coal-fired power plants with higher energy production efficiency, and improved residential and commercial heating and lighting energy use efficiency, reducing energy use by 6 percent and GHG emissions by 12 percent by 2035, relative to the reference case.
• An Expanded Green Energy scenario, with aggressive energy efficiency improvements in all sectors, expanded efficiency measures in heat and power supply, plus new hydroelectric, wind, and solar power, resulted in a reduction of energy use by nearly one third and reduction in GHG emissions by half. In this scenario Mongolia enjoys direct economic benefit from many options.
• A visionary Shift in Energy Exports scenario added rapid, extensive construction of solar and wind power, making Mongolia a major green energy exporter.

The project was carried out in conjunction with the Stockholm Environment Institute-United States (SEI). GGGI and SEI worked closely with an Advisory Committee of 16 officials from the Ministry of Energy, the Ministry of Environment and Green Development, the Ministry of Economic Development, the Renewable Energy Center, and the Mongolian Energy Association.

About GGGI

Headquartered in Seoul, GGGI is a new intergovernmental organization founded to support and promote a new model of economic growth known as “green growth.”

The organization partners with developing and emerging countries to help them build economies that grow quickly and are more efficient and sustainable in the use of natural resources, less carbon intensive, and more resilient to climate change. With a membership of 20 countries, GGGI has 34 programs in 18 countries.