Google $GOOGL announced five water stewardship commitments Wednesday, including a goal to replenish more water than it consumes at its data centers by 2030. Across 97 watersheds, those 165 projects are projected to restore upward of 19 billion gallons each year by 2030, a figure Google says would exceed twice what it consumed in 2024.
In 2025, Google replenished more than 7 billion gallons of water, the company said, roughly equivalent to the annual usage of 70,000 average U.S. households. To reach its 2030 target, the company is also evaluating more than 700 projects submitted through a water replenishment request for information, with additional announcements expected in the coming months.
Beyond replenishment, Google committed to investing in local water and wastewater infrastructure. To date, the company has pledged more than $500 million to water, wastewater, and water reuse infrastructure and to utility partners in communities where it operates data centers. It also pledged to use air cooling at sites where local water resources are assessed as high-risk, and to pursue reclaimed wastewater as an alternative where possible — pointing to a Douglas County, Georgia, project that reuses treated wastewater for cooling.
Google also announced $17 million in funding for new stewardship projects across seven states, including wetland enhancement in Georgia, farmland conversion in Iowa, green infrastructure using native plantings in Michigan, floodplain forest restoration in Minnesota, wetland restoration in Missouri, water line leak detection in Nebraska, and water infrastructure support in Texas.
Google's global head of infrastructure and sustainability Ben Townsend said the commitments are intended to serve as a model for the broader industry. "We think it's really important to sort of put a blueprint out there that communities can reference, so if somebody else comes and says, 'we'd like to build a data center there,' a community can say, 'well, here are five different things that really put the community and the watershed first,'" Townsend told The Verge.
The announcements come as data center expansion has drawn growing opposition. Survey data from Gallup shows opposition to nearby data center construction exceeding 70 percent among Americans, with environmental resource impacts driving that resistance for half of respondents — including one in five who pointed specifically to water consumption.
The tension between data center growth and water supply has been particularly acute in drought-stressed regions. Water utilities in cities including Mesa, Avondale, and Phoenix have passed ordinances capping industrial water use and requiring developers to secure supplemental water supplies. According to the company, choosing water over air as a cooling medium cuts energy consumption at data centers by roughly 10 percent, which Google cites as justification for the practice.