{"id":7429,"date":"2026-09-21T23:31:42","date_gmt":"2026-09-21T23:31:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=7429"},"modified":"2026-09-21T23:31:42","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T23:31:42","slug":"amazon-data-center-water-conservation-colorado-river","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=7429","title":{"rendered":"Amazon wants to help the Colorado River, but we still don\u2019t know how much water the company uses\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Amazon plans to spend $20 million on water conservation projects along the Colorado River, a crucial but dwindling water supply for 40 million people in the Western US.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The initiative comes as Amazon and other tech companies face mounting scrutiny over how much water their data centers use. Amazon has a goal of becoming water positive \u2014 replenishing more water than it uses \u2014 by the end of the decade. It recently disclosed some information about its water use, but we still have an incomplete picture of the company\u2019s impact as a whole.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Amazon announced<\/a> the launch of a Colorado River Basin Collaborative today, with a mission to \u201ccreate one of the biggest corporate water conservation efforts for a single U.S. watershed.\u201d It expects to raise $100 million over two years \u2014 including the $20 million investment from its own coffers \u2014 for water conservation efforts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Colorado River brings water to 40 million people<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Stretching 1,400 miles, the Colorado River brings water to 40 million people across seven states in the Western US and and two states in Mexico. The waterway has faced \u201cunprecedented\u201d drought over the last 26 years, according to the US Bureau of Reclamation. Decades of overuse on top of human-caused climate change have exacerbated the problem. To cope, the US Department of the Interior finalized<\/a> a plan<\/a> in August imposing steep water cuts on Arizona, Nevada, and California.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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As the first stop for most goods the US imports from Asia, California is home to more Amazon warehouses than any other state. In Orange County, California, Amazon pledged $2.2 million over the next three years to help detect and patch up leaks. That effort is ultimately supposed to conserve 189 million gallons of water each year, according to Amazon.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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As part of the newly announced collaborative, other companies can contract independently with conservation projects they choose. The United Nations-backed Water Resilience Coalition<\/a> will vet projects. Amazon is also joining the Water Resilience Coalition, which includes Microsoft, Meta, and other brands across a range of sectors.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Tech companies are facing waves of resistance against new AI data centers. AI was estimated to use between 312.5 billion and 764.6 billion liters of water in 2025, according to one estimate<\/a>, about as much water as people consume globally in water bottles. In Arizona, Colorado River water cuts are expected to raise utility rates<\/a>, and some residents fear data centers could make things worse.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In June, Amazon<\/a> disclosed<\/a> that its data centers used 2.5 billion gallons of water globally in 2025, including those it owns, leases, or shares. Data centers Amazon owns and operates directly reduced their water consumption by 2 percent in 2025 compared to the year prior, according to the company. It attributes gains to a 52 percent improvement in water efficiency since 2021. The company says it uses 0.12 liters of water per kilowatt-hour of electricity, claiming that\u2019s about seven times more efficient than the industry average for data centers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Amazon\u2019s annual sustainability report<\/a> shares water use per unit of power (l\/kwh) for its data centers since 2021, but not the company\u2019s total water use over that time period. Sustainability experts and environmental advocates caution against assessing a company\u2019s sustainability by efficiency measurements alone. The more efficient a technology becomes, the more resources it might ultimately consume as companies start using it more, according to an economic concept called Jevons paradox<\/a>. That makes it important to track how much water a company is using overall, as well as how much it needs in each place it operates during demand peaks<\/a> when supply is most limited.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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For comparison, Microsoft\u2019s latest sustainability report<\/a> discloses its data centers\u2019 total water use since 2020, while Google\u2019s report shares water use for global operations since 2021 with a breakdown by location. All three tech giants have had to abandon data center projects after facing community opposition, Reuters<\/em> reports<\/a>. Unlike other tech companies, Amazon\u2019s warehouses also have a massive physical footprint that isn\u2019t reflected in the company\u2019s data center disclosures.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A Guardian<\/em> investigation<\/a> in 2025 alleges that Amazon obscured how much water the company uses by deciding not to account for how much it takes to generate electricity, considered a \u201csecondary\u201d water use. Concerned about \u201creputational risk,\u201d executives decided to only address \u201cprimary\u201d water use at its facilities when calculating progress toward sustainability goals. The numbers Amazon recently shared about its data center water use also exclude water consumption stemming from electricity generation<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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While data centers often use water for cooling systems, a majority of a data center\u2019s water footprint stems from this \u201csecondary use.\u201d Power plants need water to cool equipment and turn turbines using steam, and in 2021, Amazon used 10.5 billion gallons (39.7 billion liters) of water in 2021, according to the Guardian<\/em> report citing an internal leaked document. That\u2019s about as much as 95,000 US households consume.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In an email to The Verge<\/em>, Amazon spokesperson Margaret Callahan says the Guardian<\/em> report \u201crelied on cherry-picked data from an outdated document that misrepresents our water strategy \u2014 making the conclusions fundamentally wrong and misleading\u201d and that a \u201cdocument\u2019s existence doesn\u2019t guarantee its accuracy or finality.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Callahan didn\u2019t provide more data on how much water Amazon has used in total over the years. She pointed out that the company is 75 percent toward its goal of becoming water positive, returning 3 gallons for every 4 that it used last year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In its announcement today, Kara Hurst, chief sustainability officer at Amazon, compares the new Colorado River initiative to the company\u2019s previous climate targets.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201dThrough the Climate Pledge, we\u2019ve seen what happens when companies tackle a problem together: progress accelerates. We\u2019re bringing that same model to the Colorado River because water and climate are deeply connected,\u201d Hurst says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Amazon\u2019s carbon footprint, however, grew 16 percent<\/a> in 2025<\/a> \u2014 a trend<\/a> happening<\/a> across the tech industry as companies race to make advances in AI.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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