Summary
- Amazon says its global data centre operations withdrew about 2.5bn gallons of water in 2025.
- The company reported a 0.12 L/kWh WUE figure and says it uses air cooling around 90 percent of the time.
- The disclosure raises site-level transparency questions as data centre water use becomes more prominent in planning and sustainability debates.
Amazon says its global data centre operations withdrew about 2.5bn gallons of water in 2025, giving the market a rare absolute figure for hyperscale water use.
The company said its data centres achieved a water usage effectiveness figure of 0.12 litres of water withdrawn per kilowatt-hour of IT load. Amazon also said water withdrawals at sites it owns and operates directly fell 2 percent from 2024 to 2025, even as the number of buildings worldwide increased.
The figures were published in Amazon’s water-efficiency update, which says the company is 75 percent of the way towards its goal of being water positive by 2030. Amazon says it has announced more than 50 water projects expected to return more than 5.8bn gallons annually once fully implemented.
Data centre water use is becoming a sharper planning and sustainability issue as AI demand raises power densities, cooling loads, and local scrutiny. In water-stressed regions, proposed facilities are increasingly judged against residential, agricultural, industrial, and environmental water priorities.
Efficiency and absolute use are different tests
Amazon’s WUE figure is central to its case. The company says 0.12 L/kWh is more than seven times better than an industry average of 0.84 L/kWh. It attributes the improvement to custom cooling technology, smarter systems, greater use of air cooling, and higher server operating temperature thresholds.
Water efficiency is a useful metric because it shows how much water is being used for each unit of compute. It does not answer every local planning question. A fast-growing data centre fleet can become more efficient per unit and still require large absolute volumes, which is why the 2.5bn-gallon figure gives regulators, investors, and communities a more concrete reference point.
Amazon says its data centres use free-air cooling about 90 percent of the time, relying on outside air rather than water. Evaporative cooling is used during the hottest periods, when air conditions make water-based cooling more efficient than drawing additional electricity for chiller-based systems. The company argues that limited water use during peak heat can reduce overall environmental and grid impact.
That trade-off is familiar across the sector. Air cooling can reduce water withdrawals but may increase energy use in hot conditions. Evaporative systems can reduce electrical demand but draw water. Liquid cooling can improve chip-level thermal performance while changing plant design, water strategy, and maintenance practice. Cooling choices depend on climate, workload density, grid carbon intensity, water stress, and reliability requirements.
European planning will demand more detail
Amazon’s disclosure is global rather than site-specific. That limits its usefulness in local planning debates, particularly in water-stressed regions or communities hosting clusters of large facilities. European scrutiny is moving towards more granular reporting as data centres fall under energy efficiency, sustainability, and infrastructure transparency regimes.
The company says it already operates 26 facilities using 100 percent reclaimed water and has 130 more contracted globally. It also points to water projects in Spain, Mexico, Oregon, and other locations. Those programmes may reduce pressure on potable supplies, although each new site still has to answer local questions around sourcing, withdrawals, consumption, discharge, drought conditions, and heatwave resilience.
For hyperscale operators, water is now part of the same permission stack as power and land. A strong WUE figure can support the efficiency case, while local authorities will still want project-level evidence around water sourcing, heat rejection, discharge, resilience, and community impact.
Amazon has put a number into the market that other hyperscalers may be asked to match. The next stage of the debate is likely to be less about who reports the lowest WUE and more about whether operators can show site-level water strategies that survive planning, regulatory, and community scrutiny.
