Questions and criticisms continue to arise regarding the increasing number of data centers around the world and their environmental impact. During this period, Amazon has made public the data related to its water usage for the first time. According to the company, its global data center operations will use approximately 2.5 billion gallons or more than 9 billion liters of water in the year 2025.
Although this figure appears quite large, Amazon claims that water consumption in its directly owned and operated data centers has decreased by 2 percent compared to 2024, while the company also expanded its data center network during this period.
The company released these figures through a blog post. This disclosure has been made at a time when the debate is intensifying around the world regarding the environmental impact of artificial intelligence (AI) based data centres. Recently, a one-year temporary ban on data centers was also implemented in the US city of Seattle, which was supported by some Amazon employees.
Amazon, while comparing it with companies like Microsoft, Google and Meta in its blog, claimed that in the year 2025, its data centers will use only 0.12 liters of water per kilowatt-hour of electricity, which is the lowest compared to competing companies.
However, some important differences have also emerged regarding this comparison. Amazon’s figures are based on its entire operation, while Google’s figures refer only to the water consumption of its Gemini AI data centres. AI data centers require more water than normal data centers due to the high-powered graphics processors (GPUs).
According to reports, Amazon has about 924 data centers around the world. An internal document leaked in 2022 estimated that the annual water consumption of the company’s data centers could reach 7.7 billion gallons by 2030. However, Amazon has not commented on these reports.
Meanwhile, public opinion regarding data centers also does not appear to be entirely favorable. According to a Reuters poll that ended June 8, one in three Americans supports data center construction, but only 14 percent feel comfortable with building such a center near their home.
According to the United Nations University’s Institute for Water, Environment and Health, the water footprint of global data centers could reach 9.3 trillion liters by 2030. This quantity is considered sufficient to meet the domestic water needs of Sub-Saharan Africa’s 1.3 billion inhabitants for one year.
Amazon says the water used by its data centers is much less than the water used to irrigate lawns and gardens in the US. According to the company, American citizens spend approximately 3.3 trillion gallons of water on their gardens and lawns each year, which is 1,300 times more than the water consumption of Amazon’s data centers.
The company has set a target of becoming ‘water positive’ by the year 2030. This means the company will provide more water back to communities than it uses in its data centers. According to Amazon, it has already achieved about 75 percent of this target.
The company said 26 of its data centers use fully treated or recycled water, while similar agreements have been signed for 130 other projects globally. Amazon says its data centers are kept cooled with outside air about 90 percent of the time and use water-based cooling systems only on extremely hot days.
The demand for transparency regarding water consumption of data centers is also continuously increasing. The city of The Dalles in the US state of Oregon agreed to make public Google’s water use records after a long legal battle, while Utah recently became the first US state to pass a law mandating disclosure of annual water use for new data center projects.
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