Data centers are the nerve centers of the digital world, powering our daily lives with search, maps, online banking, healthcare and 911 systems. As we expand our data center footprint to support these services, we recognize that how we build is as important as what we build.
Water is a critical component in the development and operation of data centers. Because data centers generate heat from the servers and chips that power the digital world, they often rely on water to cut down on energy consumption for cooling. In many locations, water cooling can reduce data center energy consumption by approximately 10% compared to air cooling. Total data center water use is small—US data centers use less than 1% of the water Americans use on their lawns annually—but we’re focused on protecting local water resources in every aspect of our data center operations.
Today, we are announcing several water stewardship commitments as a pledge to responsibly manage vital water resources where we build and operate data centers. Our goal is to minimize our local impacts so that our growth does not come at the expense of the communities we call home. We also announce new water management initiatives and evaluate projects through Google’s Request for Information (RFI).
New obligations for water management
Under these five commitments, Google will:
- Refill more water than we consume on our sites
before 2030. By investing in recharge projects, we can help improve water security for all. By 2025, we replenished more than 7 billion gallons (roughly equivalent to the annual water use of 70,000 average American households). And today we have 165 water management projects spread across 97 watersheds. Once fully implemented, these projects are expected to replenish more than 19 billion gallons of water annually by 2030, more than double our consumption in 2024 (enough water to supply the entire city of Los Angeles for more than 40 days). The majority of these projects not only provide volumetric benefits, but also help improve broader aquatic health challenges such as water quality.
- Help modernize the water and wastewater infrastructure for our neighbors. Waterworks are often underfunded. By working with our utility partners, we help update the public water infrastructure so that our neighbors have reliable, affordable water sources both today and in the future. In addition to paying for the water we use, Google has committed over $500 million to date to the development of water, wastewater and water recycling infrastructure and to the utility partners who provide water in the communities where we operate/build data centers. This includes projects ranging from improving local water supplies to detecting leaking pipes. We are committed to continuing to help local utilities update their infrastructure.
- Protect exposed water areas with air-cooled solutions. We use a data-driven framework to assess local watersheds for new data centers before we build, and only consider water cooling if local resources are healthy and robust. If a water source is at high risk, we choose air cooling or recycled water. We will continue to work in partnership with government agencies and local utilities to follow these principles and ensure our approach reflects community needs.
- Report our annual water consumption transparently. Water consumption should not be a “black box”. Google was the first major cloud provider to disclose our annual water usage for our data center locations, and we are committed to continuing to do so to ensure transparency for the communities where we invest and build.
- Pursue alternative and recycled solutions to protect water resources. We work with utility partners to identify fresh water alternatives in our data centers, such as reclaimed wastewater. A good example is in Douglas County, Ga., where we partnered with the county’s water and sewer authority to reuse treated wastewater for cooling at our data center campus.
New water management initiatives
Globally, we have 165 water management projects spread over 97 watersheds. Today, we are proud to announce $17 million in support of new projects to advance our water stewardship ambitions in the following seven states: