Amazon Data Centers Consumed 2.5 Billion Gallons of Water in 2025, AWS Claims Seven Times Greater Efficiency Than Industry Average
June 12, 2026
Amazon Data Centers Consumed 2.5 Billion Gallons of Water in 2025, AWS Claims Seven Times Greater Efficiency Than Industry Average
Amazon’s global fleet of data centers consumed 2.5 billion gallons of water in 2025, the company disclosed, as the hyperscaler faces mounting public scrutiny over the environmental impact of artificial intelligence infrastructure. The disclosure comes at a time when anti-data center protests have increasingly focused on water usage, prompting major cloud providers to release more granular operational data.
At the facilities Amazon owns and operates directly, total water withdrawals decreased by two percent from 2024 to 2025, even as the company expanded its data center footprint. Amazon did not disclose any change in water usage at the sites it leases. According to a previous 10-K filing, Amazon Web Services owned approximately 28.37 million square feet of data center and office space in 2025 and leased another 28.47 million square feet.
In a blog post, the world’s largest cloud company claimed that its global data center operations used 0.12 liters of water per kilowatt-hour in 2025, which it said was seven times more efficient than the industry average of 0.84 L/kWh. To illustrate its performance, Amazon shared a graphic comparing its water efficiency to rival hyperscalers, though the comparison chart pitted all of Amazon’s data centers against the more power-intensive, AI-specific facilities of Google.
The company did not include indirect water usage at the power plants supplying electricity to its data centers, nor other water impacts such as construction. Amazon noted that its facilities rely on free air cooling for approximately 90 percent of the time. While Google and Meta provide water usage data for individual facilities, Amazon did not disclose site-specific information.
To contextualize the scale, 2.5 billion gallons of water is significantly smaller than consumption by many other industries. California’s almond orchards, for instance, consume between 1.3 and 1.6 trillion gallons of water annually, while the U.S. livestock and beef industry withdraws approximately 4.5 trillion gallons per year. However, much of the data center industry relies on potable water, raising local concerns in water-stressed regions.
Amazon currently operates 26 facilities using 100 percent reclaimed water, with 130 more contracted globally. The company did not disclose what percentage of the total 2.5 billion gallons came from reclaimed sources. Amazon reiterated its goal to be water positive by 2030, stating that it was about 75 percent of the way toward that target.
The disclosure arrives amid a growing anti-data center movement, where AI water usage has become a key concern, though many critics have shared inflated and unrealistic representations of data center water consumption. The company’s latest data aims to provide a more accurate baseline for the ongoing debate over the environmental costs of the cloud and AI boom.
Source: datacenterdynamics
