Leak reveals Amazon plan to keep water use of data centres secret
Key Takeaways
- A leaked Amazon document details a strategy to conceal the true extent of its data centers' water usage from the public.
- Amazon executives feared that transparency regarding water consumption would lead to accusations of a cover-up and damage the company's reputation.
- The strategy involved only counting 'primary' water use (7.7 billion gallons projected by 2030) and excluding 'secondary' water use related to electricity generation.
- Amazon is planning a significant expansion of its data center capacity globally to support its push into artificial intelligence.
- An Amazon spokeswoman called the leaked document obsolete and claimed it misrepresents the company's current water usage strategy.
A leaked internal strategy memo from 2022 reveals that Amazon actively strategized to hide the full extent of its data centers' water consumption from the public, fearing reputational damage. The document, circulated within AWS, showed projections that Amazon's data centers would use 7.7 billion gallons of water annually by 2030, but executives warned that transparency was a "one-way door." To mitigate risk, the company opted to calculate progress toward its sustainability goals using only 'primary' water use, deliberately excluding 'secondary' water use (water needed to generate the power for the centers), which would have significantly inflated the figures. This contrasts with competitors like Microsoft and Google, who regularly publish their consumption data. An Amazon spokeswoman dismissed the document as obsolete and misrepresentative, claiming efficiency savings have already been made, though she declined to detail which parts were inaccurate. The controversy arises as Amazon aggressively expands its data center footprint globally to fuel its AI ambitions, often in drought-prone areas.
