AWS Adds Water Data to Sustainability Console, Reaching 75% of 2030 Goal

Amazon Web Services has added water withdrawal data to its Sustainability Console, letting customers track annual water use by AWS Region, service and account with historical data extending back to January 2022. The feature is available at no additional cost and arrives as AWS reports its data centres are more than seven times as water-efficient as the industry average, while the company has reached 75 percent of its 2030 water-positive goal as of 2025. The addition extends AWS's cloud sustainability reporting beyond carbon emissions into a second major environmental resource category.

 

Why Water Withdrawal Differs From Water Consumption

 

The distinction AWS draws between water withdrawal and water consumption is central to understanding what the new data actually measures. Water withdrawal captures the total volume drawn from a source such as a municipal system or groundwater, while water consumption specifically measures the portion withdrawn but not returned, typically lost to evaporation during cooling processes. A data centre can withdraw significant water while returning most of it to the local system, or it can consume a large share of what it withdraws, and these represent very different pressures on local water resources.

That distinction matters for how customers interpret the new figures. AWS calculates this data through its Customer Water Withdrawal Methodology, which has undergone independent review and adapts the company's existing carbon allocation model for water reporting, giving organisations a comparable framework to the emissions data they already track through the same console.

 

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How Cooling Method and Location Shape Water Use

 

AWS's water efficiency claims rest heavily on cooling technology choices that vary by climate. The company says it uses free-air cooling, drawing on ambient outside air rather than water-based evaporative systems, for roughly 90 percent of applicable locations, reserving evaporative cooling for the hottest periods when free-air cooling alone cannot maintain safe operating temperatures. In water-stressed regions specifically, including South Africa, the Middle East and Phoenix, AWS says it avoids water-based cooling entirely, a deliberate choice to reduce pressure on local freshwater systems in areas where water scarcity is already a significant concern.

That geographic variation illustrates a broader point about data centre water use: the same computing workload can carry very different water footprints depending on where it physically runs, since local climate determines how much a facility can rely on ambient air cooling versus water-intensive evaporative systems. Giving customers withdrawal data by region allows them to factor that variation into decisions about where their computing workloads are located, rather than treating cloud infrastructure as environmentally uniform regardless of physical location.

 

Reclaimed Water and Replenishment Projects

 

Beyond cooling method choices, AWS is expanding its use of reclaimed water, treated municipal wastewater repurposed for industrial cooling rather than drawing fresh drinking water. The company currently uses reclaimed water at 26 data centres and plans to expand the practice to more than 130 locations across nine jurisdictions, a expansion that reduces reliance on drinking water supplies while giving municipalities an additional use for treated wastewater that would otherwise be discharged. These projects typically require dedicated pipelines and cooperation with local utilities, making them longer-term infrastructure investments rather than simple operational changes.

AWS has also invested in more than 50 water replenishment projects globally, spanning watershed restoration, infrastructure upgrades and agricultural efficiency programmes across the United States, India, Brazil and Chile. Once complete, these projects are expected to return more than 21 billion litres of water annually to communities and ecosystems, the mechanism underpinning the company's broader ambition to become water positive, returning more water than its operations use, by 2030.

 

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Why Water Data Is Entering Corporate Sustainability Reporting

 

The addition responds to a specific gap in how companies have historically assessed digital infrastructure's environmental footprint, one that has focused almost exclusively on carbon emissions while leaving water impacts largely invisible. Céline Lescop, global digital sustainability executive lead at AXA Group Operations, described the expanded monitoring as completing the picture alongside existing emissions and energy measurements, allowing companies to identify and prevent negative trade-offs rather than inadvertently shifting environmental pressure from one resource to another. That trade-off risk is real: a data centre that cuts energy use in one location might rely more heavily on water-based cooling to do so, reducing its carbon footprint while increasing pressure on local water resources, a dynamic that would remain invisible without water-specific reporting.

For companies relying on cloud infrastructure, water data adds a new layer of scrutiny to procurement and digital growth decisions, particularly as data centre expansion becomes increasingly tied to energy availability, water access and local permitting constraints. Customers can now incorporate water withdrawal figures into sustainability reporting, supplier assessments and workload placement decisions, extending the kind of environmental accountability previously reserved for carbon emissions to a second critical resource. Whether this expanded transparency shapes where companies choose to run cloud workloads, and whether AWS's reclaimed water expansion and replenishment projects keep pace with its own data centre growth as AI and digital demand accelerates, will determine how much practical difference this reporting addition makes to water-stressed regions hosting cloud infrastructure.

 

 

Source: AWS