Information about Mongolia from the point of view of large-scale energy projects in the Gobi desert.
Mongolia has decided to change their postal address system. The new system will be based on GPS. But it will also use a service that maps GPS coordinates (difficult for humans to remember) to three random words (easy for humans to remember). It is called “What Three Words” and has mapped the whole world with … [Read more…]
Christian Roselund recently did an interview with Miss Mongolia 2012 Britta Battokta, who is supporting the SolarFuture.Today campaign. Embedding the video doesn’t seem to work, so you will need to click over to the SolarPV.tv site to watch that. It’s only about four minutes long. The first question was why Battokta supports the SolarFuture campaign. And … [Read more…]
Giles Parkinson writes about Rio Tinto starting to build solar power for their remotely located mining operations. They seem to plan a small 6.7 MW solar project at a place called Weipa in Queensland, Australia. There the solar will displace electricity generation with diesel generators. As the article notes, it makes sense to get rid … [Read more…]
I received a couple of questions from a journalist who is working on a story about renewable energy from the Gobi. I’ll answer them here, since that makes it more convenient to link to previous posts. Question 1: Why can the Asian super grid vision possibly meet Japan’s future energy security needs? Whatever the Asian … [Read more…]
Says this article at Nature Geoscience. Their numbers: If the contribution from wind turbines and solar energy to global energy production is to rise from the current 400 TWh to 12,000 TWh in 2035 and 25,000 TWh in 2050, as projected by the World Wide Fund for Nature, about 3,200 million tonnes of steel, 310 million … [Read more…]
The Business Council of Mongolia just reported that a company called “GDF Suez” has signed a memorandum of understanding with Newcom on developing renewable energy resources in Mongolia, at the occasion of the French Foreign Minister visiting Mongolia. I know Newcom as the leading Mongolian renewable energy company. They are operating the Salkhit wind farm. … [Read more…]
Julian Dierkes speculates about the possible way ahead for Mongolia and asks for ideas. He also kindly links to my posts (the “Mongolia” category of this blog). Okay, here are some ideas not mentioned in his post. For one, as I said before, they should open a Casino in Zamyn-Uud. That is even closer to … [Read more…]
Julian Dierkes describes the recent economic downturn in Mongolia in a new blog post. Thanks to this tweet by Turquoise Hill for the link. From that blog post: Now, coal sales to China have tumbled, the giant Tavan Tolgoi coal project is no longer the object of transnational investment desires, and direct investment in Mongolian … [Read more…]
Asahi just published an article about Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son’s idea of an “Asia Super Grid” (in Japanese language). This is the first installment in a series of articles. Thanks to this tweet by Tetsunari Iida for the link. The “Asia Super Grid” concept wants to link Asian electricity markets, like those in the European … [Read more…]
Two statements in the video were most interesting to me. For one, a spokesman for Newcom (the owner of the wind farm) remarked that Mongolia has enough wind resources in one Southern province (I assume he was talking about Ömnögovi (meaning “South Gobi”) to power all of China. That’s true. It is also true that China … [Read more…]