Amazon AWS plans to reduce water use in global data centers

As companies around the world face growing water shortages, Amazon's cloud computing division Amazon Web Services (AWS) plans to reduce water consumption in global data centers.

AWS announced that by 2030, it will return more water to communities than it consumes in its direct operations. The initiative focuses on data centers in drought-prone regions such as California, South Africa, Indonesia, and India, and measures include improving efficiency and recycling water from cooling systems.

For the operation of AWS, water is an essential resource, mainly used to cool data centers around the world. For the past two years, Amazon has been working on projects to reduce AWS water usage and increase AWS recycling water.

Data centers consume a lot of water and energy. It is often cheaper to pay to pump water than to use electricity to cool systems, but more electricity usually also means more greenhouse gas emissions.