A key role of technology giants like Amazon, Google, Meta, Apple and Microsoft is to store and manage insane amounts of digital information for their users. They do all of this in places called data centers.
Inside these physical spaces are rows of computer servers holding data from our clouds, emails, photos, videos, and social media. As necessary as they are, operating data centers also consume a lot of electricity and release huge quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
But carbon is not the only footprint. As more data centers emerge to handle the information surge from artificial intelligence applications such as ChatGPT, scientists point to water as another environmental cost for running these establishments.
Data centers rely on high volumes of water to cool equipment and prevent overheating through cooling towers, chillers, pumps, and pipes. They also require water for maintenance and humidification systems.
Research indicates that a single data center can gobble up around 5 million gallons (18.9 million liters) of water a day—enough to supply thousands of farms and households. Plus, some of these facilities are built in the US, Mexico, Brazil, and India, where climate change has intensified the already strained water resources.
Meanwhile, the past few years have witnessed a flood of promises made by businesses to conserve water as part of their efforts to become more sustainable. According to its managers, Amazon is one such corporation, pledging to give back more water than it takes.
“At Amazon, we know that water is a precious resource,” says Will Hewes, water sustainability lead at Amazon Web Services.
“We are committed to doing our part to help solve this rapidly growing challenge in the communities where we operate, as investment in local water resources is known to improve health, empower women, enable access to education, increase family income, and improve overall quality of life,” adds Hewes.
Keeping It Cool
The United Nations warns that half the world’s population could live in water-stressed areas as soon as next year. This is a reality underscoring the urgent need for data centers in these regions to drastically reduce the amount of water they consume.
Two years ago, Amazon Web Services, the leading cloud provider and Amazon’s most profitable engine, announced plans for becoming water-positive by 2030. Put simply, it means they will return more water to the environment than they draw from its rivers, lakes, watersheds and such.
AWS’s strategy has four parts- boosting efficiency with sensors and real-time data to find and treat leaks; drawing less drinking water and instead using recycled and harvested water from rain; returning water already “spent” during cooling to farms for irrigation; and funding replenishment projects with partners in numerous global locations.
Similar water-positive declarations have been made by competitors Microsoft and Google, but there is something different about how AWS reports its progress.
For one thing, Amazon does not publish statistics on its total annual water consumption. What it does provide, among other things, is Water Usage Effectiveness, a popular industry term that determines how efficiently data centers use water for cooling IT equipment.
“We really think WUE is the best metric to measure- by normalizing it to the size of your business, it gives you a sense of how effectively you’re using water within your operations,” says Hews.
“Otherwise, you could be a small organization that says, ‘we’re not using very much water,’ but relative to the size of your business, you actually may be really inefficient,” Hewes adds.
WUE is calculated by dividing the liters of water used by the kilowatt hours of energy consumed over the same period. To give a little context, a WUE of 0.2 L/kWh indicates a data center is using less than a cup of water per kilowatt-hour. This said, the average data center has a WUE of 1.8 L/kWh.
According to its latest update, Amazon Web Service’s WUE went down from 0.25 L/kWh in 2021 to 0.18 L/kWh in 2023, showing a 28% improvement. Companies like Amazon “can help shape lifestyles, set the norms and transform the way people, societies and big tech consume water,” says Kaveh Madani, director of the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health.
However, “on the one hand, you have efficiency, and on the other, you have total use- if we only increase efficiency and at the same time, total use is also increasing- that’s a situation we should be very worried about,” adds Madani.
“We can only succeed when there is an improvement in both aspects,” he adds.
Testing The Waters
So far, Amazon Web Services has returned billions of liters of water to countries impacted by climate change, economic hardship and water shortages through its replenishment plans.
The US, South Africa, Indonesia, Sweden and China are a few of the ones to name.“We have projects all around the world that help expand community water access, address water scarcity, and improve water quality,” says Tanuja Randery, vice president and managing director, Europe, Middle East and Africa at Amazon Web Services.
And therefore, “we encourage more companies and individuals to join forces in using water responsibly and support innovative ideas in the water sector,” adds Randery.
Earlier this year, Amazon received the green light to build two new data centres in Chile’s capital, Santiago, a city experiencing severe water stress and drought. The news was met with some backlash from local residents, fearing further depletion of water resources and damage to the environment.
Since then, AWS has expanded its water replenishment mission to Chile to help reduce water usage in the Maipo River basin, a lifeline for the Santiago region and the people living in its souroundings.
To carry out this task, AWS has teamed up with Latin American tech start-up Kilimo, implementing AI solutions to track water consumption, assess soil quality, and provide irrigation advice to local farmers in Chile and Brazil.
On another front, AWS and Water.org are working on a Water & Climate Fund allocating $1 billion to bring clean water to countries like India, where over 600 million people lack access to proper toilets and sanitation.
Wait, it doesn’t stop there.
In the United Kingdom, a big European market for the company, AWS and environmental charity, The Rivers Trust, have formed a partnership to tackle water scarcity and pollution in the Thames River spanning much of Southern England.
I believe “our role is to support the conservation and restoration of healthy natural rivers that are valued by all,” says Alex Adam, deputy director of strategy and stewardship at The Rivers Trust.
After all, “rivers are indicators of the health of the wider landscape- if we can fix our rivers, we’ll be going a very long way towards fixing the planet,” adds Adam.
Not Just a drop in the bucket
One of Amazon’s success stories is happening in the South of England in a place called Wiltshire, a picturesque countryside like the types you see in the movies.
Wiltshire, aside from being pretty, is located near the River Kennet, an important water source which feeds into the Thames River basin. In 2023, AWS, The Rivers Trust, and Action for the River Kennet came together to create two wetlands around the River Kennet.
Just so you know, ARK is a charity focused on improving the quality of waterways in the vicinities of Wiltshire.
Fyfield and Wilton wetlands have more than a couple of benefits. They improve soil health to handle heavy rainfall better, prevent flooding by catching and slowing down water, recharge groundwater to help with water shortages, and filter water by absorbing leftover farming material like fertilizers and pesticides.
On top of that, thousands of plants, such as marigolds and water mints, have been rooted in the surrounding areas to boost biodiversity. So, as these plants grow, they release oxygen into the water, keeping it fresh for the fish and other animals.
If you ask me, “I think the impact has been absolutely brilliant,” says David Lemon, a local farmer and landowner in Wiltshire.
This team effort “has actually changed the landscape for the better and improved the environment, the community, and done something to actively improve water quality,” adds Lemon.
The initiative has also “created an incredible wildlife habitat,” adds Lemon.
Attracted by the wetlands, “we are seeing ducks, geese, swans, snipe, deer, woodcock, waders and a vast number of other birds coming home again,” he adds.
But building a wetlands is neither easy nor cheap. It can cost millions of dollars, depending on its size and location, and involves a lot of paperwork, to boot.
In the UK, people wanting to invest in wetlands are required to complete environmental surveys as well as flood and biodiversity assessments. They also need to take archaeological surveys to make sure things like hidden treasures, dinosaur bones or other historical artefacts are not buried somewhere deep in the ground.
According to managers overseeing wetlands in Wiltshire, however, the results have been worth the trouble. “For us, this way of working and being part of a larger team has been very successful,” says Charlotte Hitchmough, director at Action for the River Kennet.
“As the local trust, we have knowledge and relationships with landowners in our catchment community but not contacts with companies at the scale of Amazon,” she adds.
Thinking back, “it has also been helpful to have a national level of skill and expertise to call upon, particularly at the design stage,” adds Hitchmough.
Water Under The Bridge???
For almost twenty years, Amazon Web Services has been making billions of dollars by providing customers with storage, database and other cloud-related services.
In 2023, AWS generated over $90 billion, a number which has only been increasing. In fact, just recently, the Seattle company’s cloud division recorded its highest profit margin in at least a decade.
Evidently, a large portion of this money is spent on building data centres around the world. According to the research group Dgtl Infra, Amazon Web Services operates around 120 physical data centres in over 100 locations and counting.
And yes, some of the money, albeit a smaller portion, is being allocated towards tackling climate change and the water crisis. For example, a few months ago, the tech giant launched a sustainability exchange platform offering access to methodologies, data, and playbooks for water stewardship and replenishment projects.
At Amazon, “we want to go beyond meeting our own sustainability commitments- we want to enable others to scale, test, and invent,” as well, says Hewes.
This is all well and good in the end, “but let’s not forget that the business model of companies like Amazon relies on sales and consumption, therefore using more water and more energy- so a few initiatives here and there won’t do the trick- what we need is a transformation which is yet to come,” says Madani.
However, “I believe the private sector is capable of taking us there,” he adds.
Amazon’s sustainability “efforts are helpful, though we should encourage them to always do better- we expect more from them after all,” adds Madani.
Because “when it comes to saving water and the environment- it will never be enough,” he adds.
