In the memo, ahead of the campaign’s launch, executives grappled with whether to include public disclosures about “secondary” use – water used in generating the electricity to power its datacentres.

They warned that full transparency was “a one-way door” and advised keeping AWS’s projections confidential, even as they feared that their advice could invite accusations of a cover-up. “Amazon hides its water consumption” was one negative headline the authors anticipated.

Callaghan said efficiency savings have already been achieved and pointed out that other companies also don’t count secondary water use.

Scientists balked at the selective disclosure and the choice not to include secondary use of water in the total.

They also purchase and build through a third party to further obscure who is actually building the datacenter. Fuckin snakes.

Love the pun.

"Plantations" has nothing but positive connotations.

Amazon "slavery in everything but name"™

Not surprised but still disappointing... You'd think a company that size would be more open about something as important as water use. Transparency shouldn't be optional...in an ideal world

"Our current strategy is to use quadruple that amount every month".

Assuming it's open loop, and somehow all the water is vented as steam.

I would like to see a much more water efficient cooling system. I assume they're doing it this way because it's the cheapest.

"Oh wow, our research shows our business model destroys the planet, better keep that a secret!" is the sort of exemplary moral reasoning I normally only expect from petroleum companies

Amazon spokesperson Margaret Callahan described it as “obsolete” and said it “completely misrepresents Amazon’s current water usage strategy”.

Interesting that they don't say in which direction it misrepresents (is it saying it is too high or too low). Maybe they are hoping the reader will infer from what they are saying that they're using less now, without them having to say that.

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.

leaked

Where there is a leak, water consumption is enormous.

Where does the water go after it's used to cool the datacentre?

Yeah. But how much bigger than San Francisco?