Amazon has disclosed how much water its data centers consumed last year: 2.5 billion gallons, according to The Verge. The company reportedly shared this figure publicly for the first time, a notable move given the intense scrutiny tech giants now face over their environmental footprint.
The timing is striking. The disclosure came just after Seattle — where Amazon is headquartered — enacted a one-year moratorium on new data center construction. According to The Verge, some of Amazon's own employees had pushed for that moratorium, reflecting internal tension at the company over its environmental impact.
Water is used in data centers primarily for cooling — keeping servers from overheating. As demand for AI computing surges, data centers are growing larger and more power-hungry, which means they also need more cooling. That has put them on a collision course with communities and regulators worried about water scarcity and energy strain.
Amazon is not alone in facing this scrutiny. Google, Microsoft, and other tech companies have all come under pressure to be more transparent about the environmental costs of their infrastructure, especially as AI workloads dramatically increase resource consumption.
The disclosure matters because it puts a concrete number on an often-abstract concern: the hidden environmental cost of the cloud services and AI tools millions of people use every day.