Update 13 June 2026:
Update: Amazon’s Numbers — and What They Still Do Not Include
13 June 2026
Since the article below was first published, a disclosure from Amazon has confirmed the core concern it raised — and illustrated precisely why voluntary disclosure, without mandatory scope requirements, is insufficient.
On 11 June 2026, Amazon announced for the first time the water consumption of its global data centre operations: 2.5 billion gallons for the 2025 calendar year — approximately 5% of what the entire metropolitan Seattle area consumes annually. The company framed this as evidence of efficiency leadership.
It is worth reading that number carefully, because of what it does not include.
Amazon’s figures exclude partner locations as well as construction and manufacturing-related consumption. More significantly, the 2.5 billion gallon figure covers only direct on-site water use. The indirect water cost — the water consumed by the power plants supplying electricity to Amazon’s facilities — is not included. Meta is currently the only major operator reporting indirect water consumption.
This matters because the gap between what Amazon reports and what it actually uses is not a rounding error. It is a documented corporate policy decision.
In late 2025, The Guardian and investigative non-profit Source Material reported a leaked internal Amazon document. That document, written in 2022 and recording 2021 consumption data, found that Amazon used 105 billion gallons of water in 2021 — equivalent to 958,000 US households, or, as the document itself described it, “a city bigger than San Francisco.”
In the lead-up to its November 2022 “Water Positive” sustainability campaign, Amazon chose to disclose only its primary water use — 7.7 billion gallons per year, roughly equivalent to 11,600 Olympic-sized swimming pools — when measuring progress toward sustainability goals. That is approximately 7% of the total figure known to executives at the time.
This was not an oversight. The document’s authors warned that selective disclosure could lead to accusations of a cover-up, noting the reputational risk of committing to a goal covering only a portion of Amazon’s direct water footprint. They anticipated the negative headlines explicitly. The document further stated that secondary water data should only be released “if governments demand it.”
That last sentence is the point. Governments have not demanded it. In Australia, they are approving data centre after data centre without demanding it.
Seattle’s city council voted unanimously this week to impose a one-year emergency moratorium on new large data centres inside city limits — a response, at least in part, to community concern about water and energy impact that operators have been slow to disclose. Australian communities in drought-affected regions, where several data centre developments are now proposed or under construction, have no equivalent protection and no equivalent disclosure.
The question this update puts to Australian politicians remains the same as the one posed in this article, now simply sharper: if Amazon executives knew in 2022 that the real number was 105 billion gallons, and chose to publish 7.7 billion, and now in 2026 are publishing 2.5 billion for direct use alone — which figure are Australian ministers relying upon when they approve these projects? And which figure are they telling their constituents?
Article prior to 12 June 2026:
The Net Zero Mirage: What Politicians Won’t Tell You About Data Centres
A call for mandatory, verifiable disclosure
There is a particular kind of political theatre playing out across Australia (and every developed nation) right now. Ministers announce new data centres as symbols of economic progress and digital future-proofing. Tech giants drape their facilities in “net zero” branding. Press releases glow. Questions go unasked.
The questions that should be asked are straightforward: net zero by what measure, by what date, verified by whom, and at what cost to water?
There are at least 44 data centres in the development pipeline in New South Wales alone, totalling 11.4 gigawatts of projected demand — equivalent to the output of nearly four Eraring coal stations. In Victoria, a further 30 centres totalling 9 gigawatts are in the pipeline. That is an extraordinary appetite for power. The public is entitled to know exactly how “net zero” will be achieved at that scale, and not merely promised.
The water question nobody is raising
Large hyperscale data centres consume between one and five million gallons of water per day for cooling alone. Five million gallons per day is equivalent to the water use of a town of between 10,000 and 50,000 residents. This consumption typically triples during summer, when warmer temperatures increase cooling demand.
Less than a third of data centre operators currently measure their water consumption — a remarkable admission for an industry whose operators routinely claim environmental leadership.
That is before accounting for the indirect water cost of electricity generation. A federal estimate placed the indirect water consumption footprint of United States data centres — attributable to the power plants supplying them — at roughly 211 billion gallons in 2023 alone.
What “net zero” actually means — or fails to mean
Australia’s ACCC now requires that environmental claims be accurate, evidence-backed, unambiguous, and supported by verifiable plans and milestones. The AANA Environmental Claims Code, which took effect on 1 March 2025, explicitly requires that substantiation exist at the time a claim is made, and that vague terms such as “sustainable” or “green” meet a high standard of proof.
Yet these obligations fall on corporations. They do not fall on the politicians who stand beside the sod-turning photo opportunity, who approve planning permits, who offer concessional energy connections, and who repeat “net zero” as though the words themselves carry legal weight.
The Australian Energy Market Commission has been asked to advise ministers as early as July 2026 on how to implement renewable energy requirements for data centres — a timeline that trails the construction pipeline by years. The cart, it appears, has been placed some distance ahead of the horse.
A simple, reasonable demand
What is proposed here is not radical. It is merely the application of the same disclosure logic that now governs corporate climate claims — applied to the political statements and approval decisions of elected representatives.
Any politician who publicly endorses, approves, or advocates for a data centre development claiming net zero credentials should be required to:
- State on the public record which verified standard the “net zero” claim is measured against.
- Disclose the projected annual water consumption of the facility, both direct and indirect.
- Identify the actual energy sources contracted to supply the facility at the time of approval, not merely at some aspirational future date.
- Table an update to parliament or their legislature within 24 months of the facility becoming operational, confirming whether the claims made at approval have been met.
This is not an argument against data centres. It is an argument against the use of unverifiable environmental language to smooth the passage of major infrastructure decisions that will draw on shared water resources and public energy networks for decades.
The public deserves more than a press release. It deserves a number.
Veritas non quaerit angulos. Truth does not seek dark corners.
A note on the coal comparison
It is sometimes claimed that data centres are worse for water than coal-fired power stations. The data does not support that framing on a per-megawatt-hour basis — coal-powered plants carried a water withdrawal intensity of approximately 19,185 gallons per megawatt-hour in 2021, substantially higher than direct data centre cooling requirements. However, the aggregate daily consumption of hyperscale facilities, their concentration in specific localities, and the near-total absence of measurement and reporting by operators, creates a localised water stress that per-unit comparisons obscure. The issue is not which technology uses more water per kilowatt-hour. The issue is that nobody in a position of political authority is required to tell the public the actual number.
This article is offered for republication and public comment.
Last Updated 3 months ago
Views: 115