Photo credit: Matthew G Eddy / Shutterstock
At long last, Amazon has reported how much water its global data centers use: 2.5 billion gallons in 2025. The company said it “returned” two-thirds of that water back to communities it operates in — mainly by investing in public infrastructure projects — as part of a broader goal to be “water positive” by 2030.
By disclosing this data for the first time, Amazon joins its competitors Google, Meta, and Microsoft, each of which have reported aggregate totals for water withdrawal and replenishment since at least 2020. Amazon didn’t publish historical tables, but said that between 2024 and 2025 the company decreased its total water withdrawal despite increasing data center capacity. That would buck an industry trend, which shows water use has generally increased over the last five years.
Amazon’s announcement comes as opposition to data centers escalates in communities across the country, where residents are raising concerns about the impact on local water systems, utility bills, and noise. Part of the frustration stems from a lack of transparency about how much water data centers for artificial intelligence expect to use, which many hyperscalers don’t disclose during the earliest stages of development, when siting decisions happen. Google is the only company that reports water use for every municipality it operates in, though only after a data center is already operational.
