Trillium Asset Management, a Boston-based firm that invests partly based on a company's environmental standards, filed a resolution with Alphabet in December seeking to understand how the company planned to meet climate goals it set in 2020, Andrea Ranger, director of shareholder advocacy at Trillium, told Reuters . Alphabet pledged six years ago to halve its emissions and shift to carbon-free energy sources by 2030, but Trillium said emissions instead rose 51%.
Water usage is still a key concern for AI data centers. Some estimates say that generating just 100 words with OpenAI's GPT-4 consumes three bottles of water . Last year, another study suggested that AI data centers use more water annually than people drink bottled water , globally.
You may like Microsoft to overhaul AI data center building with community-first approach Microsoft built a ‘Community-First AI Infrastructure’ framework for its data center projects Data center developers building private natural gas 'Shadow Grid' power plants to sidestep strained grids All four major hyperscalers have adopted closed-loop cooling systems that use substantially less water than traditional evaporative methods, but the level of disclosure varies.
Data center water consumption involves more than closed-loop cooling, as well. The majority of water a data center consumes is indirect; i.e. for generating the electricity the data center will use. A 2024 study found that data centers (in general, not specifically AI data centers) consumed about 800 billion liters of water indirectly . Another 2025 study found the vast majority of water consumption happens offsite an AI data center.
Investors want site-level data to assess operational risks more accurately. "We haven't seen them disclosing enough about their water consumption (and the) impact on the local community," Jason Qi, lead technology analyst at Calvert Research and Management, told Reuters .
Josh Weissman, director of infrastructure capacity delivery at Amazon, told Reuters the company is "increasingly disclosing site-specific water consumption data where we operate." An Amazon spokesperson added that the company was committed to being a "good neighbor" and was investing in efficiency and water reduction efforts. A Microsoft spokesperson said environmental sustainability was "a core value." Google declined to comment, and Meta did not respond to Reuters' request.
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Reference reading
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- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/investors-push-amazon-microsoft-and-google-to-disclose-data-center-water-and-power-consumption#main
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