Modern datacenter water conservation and reuse

Modern datacenters use water for cooling, humidification, and more. As technology evolves and more datacenters are required in the future, this water consumption must be sustainable.

At Microsoft, we’re supporting sustainability by expanding practices like modern datacenter cooling methods, rainwater harvesting capabilities, water reuse facilities, and atmospheric water generation techniques. (Learn more about modern datacenter cooling methods.)

As we continue to innovate our datacenters, we’re looking to improve our Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE)—a metric used to compare water usage between datacenter regions in a similar climate.

Providing for local communities

Microsoft will reduce the water intensity of our direct operations and replenish it in water-stressed regions where we work.

By 2030, we will be water positive, meaning we will replenish more water than we use. We’ll do this by putting more water back in stressed basins than we consume globally across all basins. The amount of water returned will be determined by how much water we use and how stressed the basin is.

12021 Environmental Sustainability Report