Microsoft announced Wednesday that over the past two decades, it has become dramatically more efficient in its use of water to cool data centers, slashing its consumption rate by 90% compared to levels when it opened its first facilities in the early 2000s. The company used 0.27 liters per kilowatt-hour last year, about three times better than the industry average.
Microsoft has also hit its 2030 goal of being water positive across its operations, meaning it replenishes more fresh water globally than it consumes.
And if this sounds familiar, you’re not wrong. Earlier this month, Amazon shared similar water usage stats (though it performed better) and Google came out with updated pledges around being water positive.
The tech giants are working to quench concerns about water use, which has become a key point of contention nationwide. Communities and local leaders are protesting and passing moratoriums on new data center construction. Other concerns include significant energy use that could drive up utility rates and noise complaints.
At the start of the year, Microsoft tried to get ahead of those fears by launching its Community-First AI Infrastructure initiative, in which it vowed to cover its electricity costs and forgo local tax breaks. Last week, it came out in support of the Ratepayer Protection Act, a congressional measure addressing data center utility bill impacts, though it earlier opposed Washington state legislation targeting some of the same concerns.
Microsoft remains “deeply committed” to water protections, said Judy Priest, CTO of Cloud Operations & Innovation, and Steve Solomon, vice president of Datacenter Engineering, in a blog post Wednesday.
“We continue to advance datacenter innovations that reduce water use intensity while supporting the growing performance demands of cloud and AI services,” Priest and Solomon said.
Data centers use a variety of strategies to keep electronics cool, including fans, evaporative cooling, air conditioning and direct liquid cooling. The approaches involve tradeoffs: air conditioning draws more electricity but saves water, while evaporative cooling is less energy-intensive but consumes more.
Microsoft’s approaches to curb its water use include:
- Cooling primarily with fans, supplemented by evaporative cooling when outside temperatures exceed 85 degrees.
- Using chip-level cooling that recirculates water through the system.
- Auditing data centers to ensure facilities are operating as designed and conserving water optimally.
- Expanding its use of recycled, reused or non-potable water.
Comparing companies on this front is tricky. Microsoft’s liters-per-kilowatt-hour figure applies only to data centers it owns, while Amazon’s includes both its own computing facilities and leased ones.
And although Microsoft has already reached the goal set in 2020 of becoming water positive within a decade, it takes a global tally of water use and replenishment. In theory, that means water used in a desert climate could be offset by Microsoft’s actions in a wetter region.
The Community-First AI Infrastructure initiative, however, pledges to replenish more water than it uses in each district where it operates. That aligns with the approach used by Amazon and Google, though Amazon’s replenishment goal covers only data centers, not all of its operations.
While concern about data center water use is growing, it remains relatively modest in the broader context: data centers account for about 0.5% of all industrial water use worldwide, as Amazon recently noted.
In terms of total volume, Microsoft withdrew 2.7 billion gallons of water in fiscal year 2024 across its data centers and its other operations. For context, Seattle Public Utilities delivers roughly 43 billion gallons each year to 1.6 million people in its service area.
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