Amazon plans to expend $20 myriad on h2o conservation projects alongside the Colorado River, a crucial but dwindling h2o provision for 40 myriad group in the Western US.
The undertaking comes as Amazon and another tech companies visage mounting scrutiny complete how much h2o their data centers use. Amazon has a goal of becoming h2o affirmative — replenishing additional h2o than it uses — by the end of the decade. It lately disclosed several data concerning its h2o use, but we motionless have an incomplete image of the company’s effect as a whole.
Amazon announced the initiate of a Colorado River Basin Collaborative today, alongside a goal to “create among the biggest company h2o conservation efforts for a sole U.S. watershed.” It expects to lift $100 myriad complete two years — including the $20 myriad funding from its own coffers — for h2o conservation efforts.
The Colorado River brings h2o to 40 myriad people
Stretching 1,400 miles, the Colorado River brings h2o to 40 myriad group throughout seven states in the Western US and and two states in Mexico. The waterway has faced “unprecedented” drought complete the final 26 years, according to the US Bureau of Reclamation. Decades of overuse on top of human-caused climate alter have exacerbated the problem. To cope, the US Department of the Interior finalized a plan in August imposing steep h2o cuts on Arizona, Nevada, and California.
As the archetypal halt for most products the US imports from Asia, California is residence to additional Amazon warehouses than any another state. In Orange County, California, Amazon pledged $2.2 myriad complete the next three years to assistance detect and place up leaks. That attempt is ultimately expected to conserve 189 myriad gallons of h2o all year, according to Amazon.
As part of the newly announced collaborative, another companies can agreement independently alongside conservation projects they choose. The United Nations-backed Water Resilience Coalition volition vet projects. Amazon is additionally joining the Water Resilience Coalition, which includes Microsoft, Meta, and another brands throughout a range of sectors.
Tech companies are facing waves of opposition against new AI data centers. AI was estimated to use between 312.5 milliard and 764.6 milliard liters of h2o in 2025, according to one estimate, concerning as much h2o as group consume globally in h2o bottles. In Arizona, Colorado River h2o cuts are expected to lift usefulness rates, and several residents fear data centers could create things worse.
In June, Amazon disclosed that its data centers used 2.5 milliard gallons of h2o globally in 2025, including those it owns, leases, or shares. Data centers Amazon owns and operates immediately reduced their h2o use by 2 percent in 2025 compared to the twelvemonth prior, according to the company. It attributes gains to a 52 percent betterment in h2o effectiveness since 2021. The business says it uses 0.12 liters of h2o per kilowatt-hour of electricity, claiming that’s concerning seven times additional productive than the industry average for data centers.
Amazon’s annual sustainability report shares h2o use per component of power (l/kwh) for its data centers since 2021, but not the company’s total h2o use complete that period period. Sustainability experts and ecological advocates alert against assessing a company’s sustainability by effectiveness measurements alone. The additional productive a innovation becomes, the additional resources it power ultimately consume as companies commencement using it more, according to an financial idea called Jevons paradox. That makes it crucial to track how much h2o a business is using overall, as fine as how much it needs in all location it operates during demand peaks whenever provision is most limited.
For comparison, Microsoft’s latest sustainability report discloses its data centers’ total h2o use since 2020, during Google’s study shares h2o use for earth operations since 2021 alongside a breakdown by location. All three tech giants have had to forsake data center projects following facing community opposition, Reuters reports. Unlike another tech companies, Amazon’s warehouses additionally have a enormous bodily footprint that isn’t reflected in the company’s data center disclosures.
A Guardian investigation in 2025 alleges that Amazon obscured how much h2o the business uses by deciding not to document for how much it takes to create electricity, considered a “secondary” h2o use. Concerned concerning “reputational risk,” executives decided to lone location “primary” h2o use at its accommodation whenever calculating advancement toward sustainability goals. The numbers Amazon lately shared concerning its data center h2o use additionally exclude h2o use stemming from power generation.
While data centers frequently use h2o for cooling systems, a bulk of a data center’s h2o footprint stems from this “secondary use.” Power flora need h2o to chill equipment and rotate turbines using steam, and in 2021, Amazon used 10.5 milliard gallons (39.7 milliard liters) of h2o in 2021, according to the Guardian study citing an inner leaked document. That’s concerning as much as 95,000 US households consume.
In an email to The Verge, Amazon spokesman Margaret Callahan says the Guardian study “relied on cherry-picked data from an outdated document that misrepresents our h2o scheme — making the conclusions basically incorrect and misleading” and that a “document’s beingness doesn’t justify its accuracy or finality.”
Callahan didn’t provision additional data on how much h2o Amazon has used in total complete the years. She pointed out that the business is 75 percent toward its goal of becoming h2o positive, returning 3 gallons for all 4 that it used final year.
In its notice today, Kara Hurst, chief sustainability authoritative at Amazon, compares the new Colorado River undertaking to the company’s former climate targets.
”Through the Climate Pledge, we’ve seen what happens whenever companies tackle a issue together: advancement accelerates. We’re bringing that identical example to the Colorado River since h2o and climate are deeply connected,” Hurst says.
Amazon’s carbon footprint, however, grew 16 percent in 2025 — a trend happening throughout the tech industry as companies competition to create advances in AI.
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