We understand why there is apprehension in some communities where data centers are being built. While there is much we (and other data center operators) are already doing, we’ve decided to codify our practices into a series of tenets that we’re calling our “Amazon Data Center Commitment”.
Page overview
Protecting & Enhancing Communities
1
Protecting & Enhancing Communities
2
Providing Jobs & Economic Benefit
3
Engaging Communities
4
Building & Operating Responsibly
1. Protecting & Enhancing Communities
To ensure that our data centers do not raise electricity bills for people in our communities, we work with local utilities, regulators, policymakers, and grid operators to ensure that the energy prices we pay for our data centers are sufficient to cover both the energy and infrastructure improvements that may be required.
We work with local officials to ensure our contributions to the local tax base are passed along to residents in the form of lower taxes and to improve schools, hospitals, fire and police departments, parks, roads, and other community services.
We tailor our contributions to nonprofits and community organizations to address the needs that communities identify as most important to them, such as access to community college degrees, skills and job training, and energy and water preservation and affordability.
2. Providing Jobs & Economic Benefit
We create thousands of skilled jobs between construction and long-term data center operations, supporting local families and helping local small businesses thrive.
We pay nationally competitive wages that often exceed the local and national median, and provide healthcare benefits from day one on the job.
We prioritize local hiring and procurement wherever possible, providing economic opportunity and impact to residents, local contractors and service providers.
3. Engaging Communities
We no longer use nondisclosure agreements with the government agencies we work with on our projects.
We host open houses in communities where we operate to share information about what we’re doing and encourage open dialogue. We share information about our plans as early as possible, listen to concerns, and ensure communities have the facts and the ability to engage with us as projects progress.
We proactively share innovations in data center design, new material deployment, and cooling technology through our Sustainability Exchange to enable industry participants to benefit.
4. Building & Operating Responsibly
We invest significantly in carbon-free energy to help our business and society transition toward a more sustainable future for our planet. Since 2019, we’re the largest corporate purchaser of carbon-free energy and have built by far the largest carbon-free energy portfolio of any company in the world.
We have the most energy-efficient data centers, currently leading the industry with a 2025 global PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) of 1.14. While this rating is better than both the industry average (1.25) and on-premises enterprise data centers (1.63), we plan to make continued progress in future years.
We are committed to being water positive across our data centers by 2030, returning more water to communities than we use. As of 2025, Amazon was 75% of the way toward this goal, and our data centers were seven times more water-efficient than the industry average.
We design our data center operations to at least meet local jurisdictional sound requirements at the perimeter of our site.
We invest in energy grid and water system infrastructure upgrades that support local communities. We use non-potable, reclaimed, or brackish water in our facility design wherever possible.
We will utilize backup generators in new sites that meet the EPA’s Tier 4 emissions standards (the cleanest EPA emission standard) or the equivalent standards in other regions.
We will publish our energy use, energy efficiency, water use, water efficiency, and the percent of energy from carbon free resources for the public to review on an annual basis.
