Amazon's Water Use Secrecy: Leaked Document Exposes Corporate Strategy

Amazon, the world's largest datacentre owner, strategized about keeping the public in the dark over the true extent of its datacentres' water use, a leaked internal document reveals. The company, aiming to increase its capacity for artificial intelligence, operates hundreds of active facilities and many more in development, despite concerns over the vast amounts of water used to cool their circuitry. Amazon defends its approach but has faced criticism over transparency, while competitors Microsoft and Google regularly publish their water consumption figures.

Key Takeaways:

• Amazon, the world's biggest datacentre owner, has never publicly disclosed its water consumption, unlike competitors Microsoft and Google, which regularly publish their water use figures.
• A leaked internal document, seen by SourceMaterial and the Guardian, reveals Amazon's cloud computing division chose to account for only a smaller water usage figure, excluding secondary use, to minimize reputational risk and avoid bad publicity.
• Amazon consumed 105bn gallons of water in 2021, equivalent to 958,000 US households or a city bigger than San Francisco, as mentioned in the leaked memo.
• Executives warned that full transparency would lead to accusations of a cover-up and grappled with decisions about water disclosure, citing "reputational risk" and opting for the smaller figure of primary use, 7.7bn gallons per year.
• The company's Water Positive campaign, active since November 2022, aims to "return more water than it uses" by 2030 but excludes secondary use and focuses on water replenishment projects.
• Amazon's sustainability report in August claimed it had achieved 53% of its Water Positive goal, relying on water replenishment projects and describing them as "offsets," which experts argue is incomplete accounting.
• Experts have criticized Amazon's strategy, stating that it creates a misleading picture of the company's ecological impact and fails to acknowledge the indirect water footprint.
• A former Amazon water sustainability manager accused the company of engineering industry standards to downplay its water use and avert scrutiny, while Amazon's spokesperson denied these allegations.

Statistics:

• Amazon consumed 105bn gallons of water in 2021, equivalent to the water use of 958,000 US households or a city bigger than San Francisco.
• The company's cloud computing division uses 7.7bn gallons of water per year, roughly equivalent to 11,600 Olympic swimming pools, from primary use.
• Amazon aims to reduce its primary water consumption to 4.9bn gallons by 2030 through its Water Positive campaign.
• The company's $109m "replenishment spending" on water replenishment projects in 2022 included around half that would have been spent anyway, either to meet regulatory requirements or to make water more available for AWS operations.
• Amazon's indirect water footprint accounts for roughly 90% of its total water footprint, mostly from irrigation of cotton plantations and vegetables for its grocery arm, Amazon Fresh.

Sources:

• SourceMaterial
• The Guardian
• Amazon Web Services (AWS) sustainability report in August
• Nature Conservancy
• World Resources Institute
• LimnoTech
• Alliance for Water Stewardship
• Amazon's spokesperson, Margaret Callahan
• Nathan Wangusi, former Amazon water sustainability manager