Mr Claus, it’s time to phase out coal.

3 min reading time

We know that nations, governments, businesses and individuals alike need to try and phase out fossil fuels as quickly as possible. The most polluting fossil fuel is coal, in terms of the mass of carbon dioxide (CO₂) it produces per unit of energy it releases. If we stand any chance of meeting the 1.5°C goal, then globally we need to stop using coal – and fast.

The quickest way to reduce global coal consumption is to identify the largest producers and consumers and then actively work with them to identify and use viable alternatives. One of the biggest offenders for their reliance on coal is none other than Santa Claus. That’s right, Santa.

Every year he makes his list and then he checks it twice, all to find out who has been naughty and who has been nice. And Santa only has one gift for those unfortunate children who he deems to have been naughty: coal.

To fuel this (peculiar) practice of teaching those who end up on the naughty list a valuable lesson, Santa utilises astonishing amount of coal each and every December.

This year he will be judging whether roughly 2 billion children have been naughty or nice¹. Now, let’s say that most children have been well behaved this year and only 20% find themselves on the naughty list. That would still mean coal for 400 million children. That’s 400 million lumps of coal (Santa only gives naughty kids one lump of coal each). The average mass of a lump of coal is roughly 50 grams. So, in total, that means that this year Santa will dish out 20 billion grams of coal or, in other words, 20,000 metric tonnes of coal.

That’s a lot of coal.

In a perfect world Santa would simply stop giving coal to naughty children and use an alternative, more sustainable way to remind them to be well behaved. However, we do not live in a perfect world and the transition away from coal will not happen overnight – especially not over any silent or holy nights.

Therefore, until Santa completes his rapid transition away from coal, we will need to try and remove the CO₂ that will be generated by burning 20,000 tonnes of coal (assuming that all the kids on the naughty list will burn their coal in a fit of rage, sparked by receiving no presents). Burning one tonne of coal will on average produce 2.4 tonnes of CO₂². So, Santa’s carbon footprint from coal alone this year will be 48,000 tCO₂. For the purposes of this analysis, we have not included the emissions from the manufacture of presents, nor have we included the methane that will be released from Dasher, Dancer, Rudolph et al.

How could we get rid of 48,000 tCO₂? Well, at Seafields we aim to grow Sargassum seaweed, and lots of it. This is because Sargassum removes CO₂ from the ocean water surrounding it, in turn drawing CO₂ down from the air above it. If we can then use the seaweed for long lasting products or turn it into biochar to be used as a construction material additive, then we can successfully remove CO₂ from the atmosphere.

So, back to Santa’s 48,000 tCO₂. How big does our Sargassum aquafarm need to be in order to remove that amount of CO₂ in a year? To remove Santa’s 48,000 tCO₂, we would need to grow Sargassum over an area of about 3.5 km² of ocean, the size of 490 soccer fields. That sounds like a lot, Santa is after all a big emitter, but it is small compared to the 43.2 km² of land that would be needed to sequester this CO₂ using trees.

Unfortunately, we are still in the Research and Development phase and don’t have operations that big yet to help Santa out.

Santa has two options here:

1. Send some of his best elves to Seafields, so that they can help us get our operations up and running at lightning speed.

2. Stop using coal.

We know which option is easier. We hope that Santa does too. Phasing out coal from his Lapland operations would mark a huge leap forward on his path to net zero. It would also give him time to focus on the harder-to-abate activities, such as the reindeer-based methane.

And once our operations are up and running, we can help him further, by not only cleaning up his coal emissions from 2022 but also all of his legacy emissions caused before his rapid phase out of coal. Since our ultimate aim is to mitigate 1 gigatonne of carbon annually, we will definitely have enough carbon credits to cover Santa’s legacy emissions.

Merry Christmas, All!

1 Assuming that Santa is non-denominational and will visit all children, regardless of faith, around the globe on the evening of the 24th of December this year.

 2 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/greenhouse-gas-reporting-conversion-factors-2022