Are AI Companies Disclosing Their Water Usage Publicly?

Partial Transparency, Not Comprehensive Disclosure

Some major technology companies operating AI infrastructure do publish information about their water usage, typically as part of broader annual sustainability or environmental reporting that covers a range of resource use topics beyond just water. This represents a meaningful degree of transparency compared to no disclosure at all, and it reflects growing recognition within the industry that resource use, including water, is a legitimate topic of public and investor interest.

However, this disclosure generally falls short of what would be needed for comprehensive, standardized, AI-specific water usage comparisons across the industry. Reports often cover a company’s overall global operations rather than isolating water use specifically tied to AI-related data center activity, and the methodology and level of detail used can vary considerably from one company’s report to another.

Why Isolating “AI-Specific” Water Use Is Especially Hard

Even when a company reports water usage figures, isolating the specific portion attributable to AI workloads, as opposed to other data center operations like general cloud computing, storage, or web hosting, is often not possible from public disclosures alone. Data centers frequently run a mix of different workloads, and companies don’t typically break down their water usage reporting with enough granularity to separate AI-specific consumption from the facility’s total water use.

This measurement challenge is similar to the difficulty in isolating AI-specific electricity use described in related questions about AI’s energy consumption, and it reflects a broader industry-wide gap in granular, standardized environmental reporting specifically tailored to AI as a distinct category of activity, rather than being unique to water usage alone.

Growing Pressure Toward More Transparency

Public and media attention on AI’s water usage, particularly stories highlighting the water demands of data center cooling, has increased over recent years, and this attention has put growing pressure on companies to provide more detailed and accessible information about their environmental footprint, including water use. Some companies have responded by expanding what they include in sustainability reporting, and community and regulatory scrutiny in certain regions where data centers have raised local water concerns has further increased pressure for greater transparency.

Whether this pressure eventually leads to a more standardized, industry-wide disclosure framework specifically for AI-related water use remains to be seen, but the trajectory over recent years has generally moved toward more, rather than less, public discussion of the topic.

Bottom Line

Some AI and technology companies disclose water usage information through broader sustainability reporting, but this practice isn’t yet universal, standardized, or detailed enough to reliably isolate AI-specific water consumption, which continues to limit how precisely the public can compare water usage across different companies and facilities.

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