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The West's biggest online shopping mall comes clean about its datacenter water usage

Amazon says its datacenters used about 2.5 billion gallons of water last year, but claims that's far less than rival hyperscalers and that it remains on track to become "water positive" by 2030.

In a blog post, the digital tat bazaar and cloud computing biz says the 2.5 billion gallon figure covers its entire global datacenter footprint for 2025. It downplayed the number by comparing it to the volume of water Americans - a country of 350 million people - used on lawns and gardens over the same period.

Amazon disclosed water usage of 0.12 liters per kilowatt-hour (L/kWh) at its data facilities, and claimed Microsoft used 0.27 L/kWh during 2025, while Meta's consumption stood at 0.19 L/kWh in 2024 and Google was the thirstiest at 1.15 L/kWh during the same year.

The Register has asked Microsoft, Meta and Google to comment.

The water usage, we're told, is 75 percent of the way to Amazon's goal - announced in 2022 - of being "water positive" by 2030. It means facilities return more water to the environment than they consume, via measures including rainwater capture or other treating waste water for reuse.

The figures come amid growing pushback against datacenter construction in the US. A recent Ipsos survey found most Americans don't want facilities built nearby, citing worries over electricity prices, eyesore buildings, and water-hungry operations. This echoes a 2022 report that found Google datacenters were consuming more than a quarter of all the water used in The Dalles, Oregon.

Or, if you'd rather not to blame the industry itself, you could go with the line that Chinese operatives are spreading propaganda over social media, a claim that OpenAI and other interested parties are keen to promote.

Whatever the cause of the backlash, the underlying numbers are real: datacenter water use has been climbing for years, driven by the sheer growth in facility numbers and by AI servers, which run hotter and demand more cooling than traditional kit. 

Water consumption at Microsoft's facilities surged 34 percent to 6.4 million cubic meters in 2022, for example, with generative AI blamed.

Making matters worse, many datacenters now in the pipeline in the US are slated for areas already experiencing drought, according to analysis by The Guardian newspaper.

Amazon says that its facilities use "free air cooling" about 90 percent of the time, pulling in outside air and flowing it past servers to absorb the heat, with no water involved - though it does resort to evaporative cooling during the hottest weather.

But as The Register outlined last year, kicking the water habit completely will be nearly impossible, regardless of what claims the operators may make. ®