AI and Clean Energy: Fuelling Amazon’s Data Centre Growth

According to Amazon’s 2025 Sustainability Report, the company matched 100% of the electricity used in its global operations with renewable energy for the third consecutive year.

The business achieved this through its carbon-free energy portfolio, which has 712 projects and a 42GW total capacity, supporting the global expansion of data centres. 

The tech giant added more data centre capacity than any other company in 2025 to keep up with demand for its AWS and AI services.

The next move for the company in low-carbon energy involves exploring nuclear solutions.

In 2025, Amazon also invested in small modular reactor developer X-energy and aims to add 5GW of new nuclear energy to the US grid by 2039.

Optimising operations across global facilities

Amazon is expanding its use of AI for sustainability throughout its business, installing AI tools in 820 facilities to detect leaks and mechanical problems.

Its engineers also created an AI system that identifies what materials are in unsellable or non-donatable items to help improve recycling efficiency.

Kara Hurst, Chief Sustainability Officer at Amazon, says: “For Amazon’s work in sustainability, we laid out our long-term vision starting back in 2015 when we first suggested net-zero goals in a planning meeting, which culminated in setting The Climate Pledge in 2019.

“Sure enough, we’ve encountered tremendous change in each of the seven years since.

“Perhaps none bigger than AI, which is both transforming what's possible–accelerating discovery, optimising systems and unlocking solutions that weren't within reach before–yet also creating new demands for energy, water, and infrastructure.”

Carbon intensity drops as delivery network decarbonises

Total emissions at the company increased by 16% over the past year as the business grew, but its carbon intensity dropped by 38% compared to 2019. This demonstrates how emissions are becoming less tied to growth.

The business expanded its global electric delivery van fleet by 68% in 2025 and deployed more than 52,700 electric vans that delivered 2.4 billion packages. 

Middle-mile logistics also added more than 360 electric heavy goods vehicles.

By updating its packaging machines to use custom-fit paper, Amazon avoided using 288 million single-use plastic bags in North America. 

As a result, 73% of shipments in the region arrived in materials that can be recycled at home.

Advancing global water positivity targets

Water management was a major achievement for Amazon in 2025 as the company is 75% of the way to its goal of making its global data centres water positive by 2030.

Amazon reached its 2027 water positive goal for India two years early. It achieved 120% water positivity in its direct operations there by using leak detection and on-site wastewater treatment.

“As we recently shared, we’ve been inventing and investing in technology to increase our water usage efficiency across our data centre footprint for many years already, and today our data centres are seven times more water-efficient than the industry average,” Kara says.

“We also have more buildings than any other cloud provider using reclaimed water, and we’re investing in water replenishment projects around the world that have helped us get 75% of the way toward our goal to be water positive by 2030.

“These things don't happen overnight, but I’m proud of where we are and we're pushing to go faster.”