Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud computing arm of Amazon, plans to reduce the amount of water used in its global data centers at a time when companies around the world are facing growing water shortages, according to the Wall Street Journal.
On Monday, local time, AWS announced that it will return more water to communities than it consumes in direct operations by 2030. The plan 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.
Water is an essential resource for AWS operations, primarily for cooling data centers around the world. In the past two years, Amazon has been working on a project to reduce the amount of water used by AWS and increase the amount of water recycled by AWS.
U.S. media pointed out that data centers consume a lot of water and energy. It is often cheaper to spend money pumping water than to use electric cooling systems, but more electricity usually means more greenhouse gas emissions as well.
