Amazon has faced scrutiny after a leaked document revealed that it planned to keep the full extent of its datacentres’ water use secret. The internal memo shows executives debated how much water to disclose as the company expanded its cloud computing capacity and artificial intelligence operations.
As the world’s largest datacentre owner, Amazon operates hundreds of active facilities and has plans to build many more. While the company says it manages water efficiency, it has not publicly shared figures for total water usage. Competitors like Microsoft and Google publish their water consumption regularly, but Amazon only accounts for a portion.
The leaked memo, dated October 2022, shows Amazon’s cloud division, AWS, considered only the primary water use, which excludes water used in electricity generation and other indirect uses. Executives feared full transparency would pose reputational risks. The memo notes the company consumed 105 billion gallons of water in 2021, enough to supply nearly a million U.S. households.
An Amazon spokesperson called the document “obsolete” and said it “misrepresents current water strategy.” She added that meetings often reshape internal findings, and the company has achieved efficiency improvements.
The memo predates AWS’s Water Positive campaign launched in November 2022. This program pledged to return more water than it uses by 2030. However, the campaign only counts primary water use, not the secondary consumption for electricity. Executives argued that including secondary use would double campaign costs without delivering operational or regulatory benefits.
The internal debate reflected concern over possible negative headlines. The memo mentions potential coverage such as “Amazon hides its water consumption” and warned that selective disclosure could be seen as a cover-up. Executives ultimately chose to use the smaller figure of 7.7 billion gallons per year—equivalent to 11,600 Olympic swimming pools—when measuring progress toward internal targets. The company aims to reduce this figure to 4.9 billion gallons by 2030.
Experts have criticised this approach. Shaolei Ren, a professor at the University of California, Riverside, said standard environmental practice is to include both primary and secondary water use to reflect the true water cost of datacentres. Tyler Farrow, from the Alliance for Water Stewardship, added that offsets and replenishment projects do not cancel out water used in operations, calling claims of being “water positive” potentially misleading.
The document also revealed that indirect water use, known as scope 3, which covers activities like agricultural supply for Amazon’s retail and food businesses, makes up roughly 90% of the company’s total water footprint. Amazon has kept this figure confidential and does not include it in targets for reduction.
Despite these concerns, the Water Positive campaign is ongoing. AWS has reported reaching 53% of its goal through water replenishment projects, some in partnership with non-profit groups. About half of the planned $109 million spending on these projects would have occurred regardless, to meet regulatory obligations or operational needs, according to the memo.
Former Amazon water sustainability manager Nathan Wangusi said the company funds efforts to create global standards for measuring watershed restoration. He claims these methods are used to downplay water use. Amazon disputes this, saying reporting is based on third-party verified utility data and voluntary sustainability practices.
As Amazon continues to expand its datacentre network, including in some of the world’s driest regions, questions about transparency remain. Employees and experts have suggested that fully disclosing water use, even partially, would increase trust, even if it highlighted challenges.
Amazon’s strategy of selective disclosure, focusing on primary water use while keeping secondary and indirect usage confidential, illustrates the tensions between sustainability commitments and reputational risk in the tech industry.
