AWS: Helping Sustainability Teams Manage Water Withdrawals

As a global data centre and cloud computing company, Amazon Web Services (AWS) focuses on protecting and replenishing water resources in its operations.

Its data centres are seven times more water efficient than the industry average and it has reached 75% of its goal to be water positive by 2030.

In March 2026, the company released the AWS Sustainability console to give sustainability teams access to emissions data.

AWS has added annual water withdrawals data to the system, allowing teams to track their water usage alongside their carbon emissions.

What is the Sustainability console?

The AWS Sustainability console includes Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions data attributed to a company’s AWS usage.

It provides teams with more flexibility in accessing and working with their emissions data.

The console builds upon AWS’ Customer Carbon Footprint Tool, centralising emissions data and reporting tools into a single interface.

This removes the need for teams to navigate across multiple services to manage their sustainability reporting.

AWS Sustainability console presents data using location-based and market-based methodologies, ensuring transparency and consistency and aligning with established carbon accounting standards.

Alexis Bateman, Head of Sustainability at AWS, said on LinkedIn: “AWS is now the first cloud provider to show customers exactly how much water we withdraw on their behalf, based on their actual cloud usage.

“Today, we’re adding that visibility to the AWS Sustainability console. We built it because you can’t improve what you can’t see and customers told us they wanted the same clarity on water that we provide on carbon. Now they can see both, in the same place.

“Transparency isn’t a ‘nice-to-have’ anymore – it’s a prerequisite for building trust.”

Bringing water stewardship to the console

With the new update, AWS customers can view water withdrawals associated with their workloads by AWS region, service and AWS account.

This withdrawal data is calculated using the AWS Customer Water Withdrawal Methodology, which has been independently reviewed.

It extends the same principles used for carbon reporting to water stewardship, helping companies to automate reporting and simplify compliance.

Through the Sustainability console, AWS encourages organisations to identify opportunities to be more water-efficient by optimising cloud workloads, adopting water-smart building technologies, and supporting community water initiatives.

Céline Lescop, Global Digital Sustainability Executive Lead at AXA Group Operations, says: “We are expanding our environmental monitoring to include the water footprint of our cloud services.

“It completes our existing measurements of GHG emissions and energy consumption, giving us a full picture of our environmental impact and allows us to identify and prevent negative trade-offs, ensuring we create holistic solutions rather than shifting problems from one resource to another.”

Inside Amazon’s water sustainability strategy

Amazon’s Water Positive Methodology sets out its water strategy through three main pillars: reduce, reuse and replenish.

It focuses on minimising freshwater demands from its facilities and investing in replenishment projects to improve the quantity or quality of water.

AWS has improved its water efficiency by investing in custom cooling technology, using smarter systems and minimising water use wherever possible.

In water-stressed regions, the company does not use water for its cooling and in the rest of its facilities, its data centres use free air cooling around 90% of the time.

Through these commitments, AWS’ data centres are more than seven times more water-efficient than the industry average.

AWS invests in projects to increase water access, accessibility and quality by restoring watersheds, improving infrastructure and bringing clean water services to water-stressed communities.

It currently supports more than 50 water replenishment projects worldwide, which are expected to return more than 21 billion litres of water annually to local communities once completed.