Executives at world’s biggest datacenter owner grappled with disclosing information about water used to help power facilities

Amazon strategised about keeping the public in the dark over the true extent of its datacentres’ water use, a leaked internal document reveals.

The biggest owner of datacentres in the world, Amazon dwarfs competitors Microsoft and Google and is planning a huge increase in capacity as part of a push into artificial intelligence. The Seattle firm operates hundreds of active facilities, with many more in development despite concerns over how much water is being used to cool their vast arrays of circuitry.

Amazon as a whole consumed 105bn gallons of water in total in 2021, as much as 958,000 US households, which would make for a city bigger than San Francisco, according to the memo.

Asked about the leaked document, Amazon spokesperson Margaret Callahan described it as “obsolete” and said it “completely misrepresents Amazon’s current water usage strategy”.

  • FaceDeer@fedia.io
    191·
    2 days ago

    The memo is about whether to release figures about secondary water usage, ie, what water is being used in the generation of electricity for their data centers. A process that I expect isn’t even really under their control in most cases, electricity is bought from the grid. The memo is from 2022, before ChatGPT was even released to the public, so the second paragraph about how Amazon is planning to increase its AI capacity is completely unrelated to this.

    Dislike Amazon if you wish, but let’s not misrepresent the news in the process. There are enough real reasons to dislike them without doing that.

    • TotallynotJessica@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      3·
      1 day ago

      secondary water usage, ie, what water is being used in the generation of electricity for their data centers. A process that I expect isn’t even really under their control in most cases, electricity is bought from the grid.

      Good things large companies aren’t looking into their own power generation.

      Oh wait…

      Also, the government is corrupt and companies have an outsized influence on where power plants appear and how much they generate. Even in a less corrupt system industry would have a large impact.

      And even if you were 100% correct, that water use still matters in how it affects the environment and available water supply. All water use is part of the calculation of whether or not lakes dry up and communities are destroyed.