Dive Brief:
- Amazon announced an update to its water recycling program Tuesday that will expand its use of recycled water to cool its data center operations to over 120 locations across the United States by 2030.
- The scaling of the program expands on prior efforts to use recycled water for data center cooling at locations in Virginia and California, and Amazon has expansion efforts underway in Georgia and Mississippi as well, according to the June 5 release.
- The tech and retail giant has a goal to be “water positive” by 2030, or return more water to communities than it directly uses. The company reached 53% of that goal in 2024, Brandon Oyer, AWS’ Americas head of energy and water, said at the company’s Washington, D.C. Summit Tuesday.
Dive Insight:
By expanding the program to more of its U.S. data centers, Amazon said it expects to preserve more than 530 million gallons of drinking water in the communities it operates in. The company will use previously used and treated water to cool its data centers, as Oyer said it is not important for the water used to cool the data centers to be potable.
“Water is a very local resource, and it needs to be managed as such,” Oyer said at a June 5 panel. “When we go and build and invest in these communities, we know that we're going to be there for 10-20 years. So, we want to do the right thing.”
Oyer said the company is also looking at rainwater recapture and other water replenishment projects for its global data center operations.
While conversations about the needs of increased artificial intelligence demand typically center on the technology’s energy demands, large data centers also require significant resources to keep the technology infrastructure from overheating.
Last month, during the inaugural DC Climate Week, Jonathan Gilmour, a data scientist for Harvard’s school of public health, said sustainability remains the “elephant in the room with AI,” and “we’re now at a stage where AI and data centers that power it are competing directly with humans for land and water and energy.”
