Mongolia?s forest coverage is 8.2 % only. Moreover, forests are in the north of the country. Therefore, residents in Gobi and steppe regions always face difficulty in making fire with woods and other fuels. What they do is to harvest and destroy saxauls and other bushes to make fire for cooking and heating, and for survival as a whole. Mixing powder coal with animal dung and mud is a solution to this problem.
It is an energy efficiency measure which can be practiced at the grassroots level. The grant intends to mobilize local unemployed citizens to make coal and animal dung mixed briquettes by using an old/abandoned, but still operating machine to save saxaul and other bushes used for fire making in order to prevent/combat desertification and contribute to mitigating climate change effects as well as to support their livelihoods. There established a small community plant to make briquettes. 40,000 briquettes have been made over the four month last summer. The plant supplies not only Shinejinst village with briquettes, but two surrounding villages as well.