With over 1000 licenses issued across the country, a diverse range of mineral extraction operations are transforming in Mongolia. The Gobi region is crowded with both mega mines and smaller-scale operations. The Gobi also has excellent conditions for renewable energy and is poised to be a site for significant investment in this industry.

Solar and wind farms are already starting to pop up in SouthGobi /Umnugobi/ and Dornogovi provinces reflecting Mongolia’s commitment to reduce its reliance on coal power under the State Policy on Energy 2015-2030.

“Mongolia is attractive for deploying green hydrogen production and more renewable energy projects can be developed in the Central Asian region”, Elixir Energy Managing Director and CEO Neil Young said in an interview. “Mongolia has very high-quality wind and solar resources – and our analysis shows that in addition, these 2 renewable sources are highly complementary in terms of combining to produce very strong annual capacity factors. However, Mongolia’s primary attractiveness as a green H2 project location is its immediate proximity to potentially very large Chinese H2 markets. H2 is very expensive to move – so location close to markets is arguably the most important source of competitive advantage,” Young told

“Our analysis shows that shipping H2 from Mongolia to China by pipeline would cost ~10% of the cost of liquefying and shipping it by boat from distant countries like Australia. If our view is correct, then we expect many others to follow us – the renewable resources available are massive in scale – as is the potential market in China in the decades to come,” he added.

Mongolia has only a small electricity grid – ~1,000 MW – with limited interconnection to Russia and China. A number of grid-scale wind and solar farms are already present in the system – but the immediate scope for more will need to await more energy storage to back them up and/or higher inter-country interconnectivity.

There was no specific legislation on green hydrogen in Mongolia