Amazon’s data centers used 2.5 billion gallons of water last year

Just aft Seattle enacted a one-year data halfway moratorium that immoderate of Amazon’s ain labor pushed for, Amazon shared really overmuch h2o its information centers use, reportedly for the first time. With concerns astir water depletion and power use a attraction of caller AI information halfway building debates, Amazon says its world information halfway operations consumed 2.5 cardinal gallons of h2o successful 2025 astatine a complaint of 0.12 liters per kilowatt-hour of electricity, dropping by 2 percent from its 2024 full moreover arsenic it expanded operations.

Amazon besides claims it’s utilizing h2o much efficiently than immoderate Big Tech rivals — this schematic successful Amazon’s study points to Microsoft, Google, and Meta information showing each utilizing much h2o per kilowatt-hour than Amazon did complete the past fewer years.

Google by acold utilized the most; however, it appears the information cited is focused specifically connected Gemini AI datacenters, while Amazon is reporting connected each of its operations. However, Amazon’s information doesn’t facet successful indirect h2o usage astatine the powerfulness plants providing energy for its information centers, aliases things for illustration h2o usage from caller information halfway construction.

Amazon says that “about 90 percent of the time” its information centers usage aerial cooling, and uses evaporative h2o cooling connected “the hottest hours of the hottest days,” while besides raising its servers’ tolerances for heat. Amazon claims its information centers are 7 times much water-efficient than the manufacture average, based connected an adjusted number from a peer-reviewed investigation paper released past year.