Amazon Achieves 75% of Goal to be Water Positive in Data Centers by 2030 – ESG Today

Amazon introduced a sequence of milestones in direction of its water-focused sustainability objectives, together with reaching 75% in 2025 in direction of its “water constructive” goal to return extra water than it makes use of in its knowledge heart operations by 2030, and greater than doubling its knowledge heart water effectivity since 2021.

Amazon initially set its water constructive aim in 2022, setting out a technique to attain its goal primarily based on key points together with bettering water effectivity, utilizing sustainable water sources, returning water for group reuse and supporting water replenishment tasks.

The brand new milestone marks vital a big soar in progress in direction of the water constructive aim prior to now 12 months, with the corporate saying final 12 months that had reached 53% in 2024.

Amazon revealed that it withdrew about 2.5 billion gallons (9.5 billion liters) throughout its international knowledge heart footprint throughout 2025. To assist attain its water constructive aim, the corporate outlined a sequence of initiatives it has been pursuing to seize water that might be in any other case wasted and return it to communities, together with investing in over 50  water tasks anticipated to return greater than 5.8 billion gallons of water yearly, and utilizing water in its operations that might in any other case be unusable, corresponding to reclaimed water sourced from wastewater remedy crops as a substitute of utilizing drinkable water.

Along with advancing on its water replenishment objectives, the corporate additionally outlined its initiatives to scale back the quantity of water it makes use of in knowledge facilities, revealing that it has achieved a 52% enchancment in water effectivity since 2021, reaching 0.12 liters per kWh, down from 0.25 l/kWh, and 7x forward of the business common 0.84 l/kWh.

So as to scale back using water for knowledge facilities, Amazon mentioned that it makes use of “free air cooling” 90% of the time, operating air previous its servers to soak up warmth and pumping it again outdoors. For the remaining 10%, when the air is just too scorching, Amazon mentioned that it makes use of “evaporative cooling,” by which water is sprayed onto an absorbent medium, which pulls warmth from air that’s handed by way of it because the water evaporates.

Amazon additionally mentioned that it has been working to lift the temperature thresholds at which its knowledge heart function, enabling servers to tolerate extra warmth, and decreasing the period of time that water is required to chill them down.

Amazon Chief Sustainability Officer Kara Hurst mentioned:

“We’ve been engaged on water for a very long time, and that’s helped us acquire effectivity. It’s additionally taught us that options don’t lie in a single single follow, innovation, or concept. We concentrate on a number of approaches – from knowledge heart operations to investing in group replenishment tasks – as a result of making an actual impression requires holistic considering. And whereas we’re doing this in one of the simplest ways attainable, we additionally know we have now to maintain innovating – as a result of the world retains altering.”