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AMAZON.COM Inc. said its data centers used 2.5 billion gallons of water worldwide last year, or about 5% of the amount metro Seattle consumes annually.

The world’s largest cloud-computing company said the disclosure shows that it cools server farms more efficiently than some of its large tech industry peers.

Amazon’s announcement arrives amid a politically charged debate over how much water and electricity data centers use. Some states and cities – including Amazon’s home base Seattle – have considered or implemented moratoriums on construction of new server farms, in part to allow for further study.

Water researchers and community advocates say the only way to understand data center water usage is if Amazon and its peers share more granular data. Gradually, more information about water consumption is coming out.

After a protracted legal battle in Oregon, the city of The Dalles agreed to release records showing how much municipal water was being used by data centers operated by Alphabet Inc.’s Google. Utah recently passed a first-of-its-kind data center water transparency law that would require new data center developments of a certain size to disclose annual water withdrawals, among other metrics.

“We need more transparency,” said Iris Stewart-Frey, a professor of environmental science at Santa Clara University and lead author of a report on California’s data center water usage. “Then communities will actually know what they’re getting into and can evaluate the costs and benefits, because the situation is very different from locality to locality.”

Among the largest cloud companies, only Google and Meta Platforms Inc. provide water usage data for individual facilities. It’s not clear if Amazon’s new disclosure will mollify critics.

But Kerry Person, an Amazon Web Services vice president who oversees data center operations, said the company’s data is clear.

“If you look at the press right now, the data center industry is apparently consuming all of the water in the world,” he said in an interview. “When you actually look at the data and look at the details, nothing could be further from the truth.”

AWS data centers that use water for cooling chill their servers with air blown in from the surrounding environment. On days when temperatures exceed 85 degrees, that air is pushed through a water-soaked filter, cooling it on the way into data center halls and evaporating some of the water.

Facilities in some regions where water is scarce — the Phoenix area and Saudi Arabia, for example — don’t rely on outside water sources for cooling, Amazon said, instead using air-cooled chillers that circulate refrigerant and water in closed loops. 

Amazon’s water usage effectiveness calculation and its cumulative annual withdrawal figure include both water that is evaporated over the course of cooling the facility and liquid discharged to wastewater or other systems. Amazon’s Person said the company is trying to be conservative by including both measures. That makes it hard to make apples-to-apples comparison with other companies, which tend not to include discharged water.

Still, Amazon’s data suggests it’s a more efficient water user than its peers. The company said its facilities last year drew about 0.12 liters of water per kilowatt hour of electricity consumed, a metric designed to get at how efficiently a given data center uses water. That’s down from 0.15 liters per kilowatt hour in 2024, according to the company’s sustainability report.

Microsoft Corp.’s water usage effectiveness was 0.27 liters per kilowatt hour in the company’s most recently reported fiscal year. AWS, adjusting an academic estimate of data center use, pegged the industry average water withdrawal efficiency at 0.84 liters per kilowatt hour.  

Amazon’s efficiency figure is based on sites that AWS owns or leases, excluding so-called colocation facilities where the company rents data center space, which in 2024 accounted for about a fifth of the computing power at Amazon’s disposal. The company’s disclosures also exclude water use required to generate the electricity that powers its data centers. 

Amazon has set a goal of returning more water to the environment and other users than it withdraws by 2030, by paying for projects including watershed restoration and refurbishment of wells and water systems. The company also currently pipes water to 26 of its own data centers, and is working on more than 100 more such water reclamation projects.  –BLOOMBERG

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THE US Treasury refunded nearly $22 billion in tariff revenue collected from importers in May, the first swath of such repayments since the Supreme Court struck down a major component of President Donald Trump’s trade policy. 

The amount was roughly equal to tariffs taken in during the month, according to a Treasury Department statement Wednesday, meaning that refunds essentially canceled out the government’s duties revenue.

The administration began processing refunds in April after the Supreme Court ruled that President Donald Trump didn’t have the authority to impose tariffs using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. But the eventual extent of the reimbursements remains uncertain after the administration appealed a court order to refund every importer who paid the $166 billion collected under IEEPA authority.

Net revenue from customs duties were slightly negative — by about $42 million — the first time that has happened in Treasury data compiled by Bloomberg going back to 2015. 

When Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was asked about the tariff refund case during a congressional hearing last week, he said the money would be returned to the companies that imported the tariffed goods.

Overall, the deficit narrowed to $1.25 trillion for the first eight months of the fiscal year, representing a 9% decline from the same period last year.

Revenue from tariffs, which peaked in October, made a significant contribution to the Treasury’s coffers during the 2025 fiscal year, resulting in the smallest deficit in three years. Bessent has said revenue collected through tariffs imposed using other authorities will result in the same amount hitting the government’s coffers in 2026 but some of those measures are not fully in place.

The interest the US paid on its debt was $133 billion in May, an increase of 44% over the same month last year. Individual tax withholdings plus Social Security and Medicare taxes collected increased to $286 billion in May from $247 billion last year, while corporate tax receipts were down by 67%.

For the full fiscal year, the US deficit is expected to widen, based on Congressional Budget Office projections. The nonpartisan outfit said in its February outlook that the deficit would reach $1.85 trillion for the 2026 fiscal year and with $1.89 trillion for 2027. –BLOOMBERG

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WASHINGTON – US President Donald Trump vowed fresh strikes on Iran Thursday and promised to take the country’s key oil infrastructure, in what would be a major escalation in the war with the Islamic republic.

“The United States will be hitting Iran… VERY HARD TONIGHT,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social network.

“At some point in the not too distant future, we will be taking Kharg Island, and other oil infrastructure points, and assume total control of their Oil and Gas Markets, much like we have with Venezuela,” he added.

Trump gave no details of how the United States would seize Iran’s oil terminals, but any such operation would almost certainly require the involvement of US ground troops.

He talked about a possible seizure of Kharg Island earlier in the US-Israeli war in Iran, which began on February 28.

Kharg Island is at the heart of Iran’s oil export industry, a lynchpin of the country’s battered economy. It sits off Iran’s Gulf coast, hundreds of kilometres northwest of the narrow, strategic Strait of Hormuz.

The United States says it has taken control of Venezuela’s oil industry since toppling and seizing its president Nicolas Maduro in January. –AFP

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TOKYO – Japan will secure the same volume of crude oil imports in July as it did the year prior, its leader said Thursday, crediting alternative sources obtained despite the Middle East war’s impact.

Japan relied on the Middle East for over 90 percent of its oil imports but has significantly diversified its supply chain, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi told a special meeting of her ministers.

The United States expanded its exports tenfold and Japan also managed to approach other oil producers, she said.

“In addition to the United States, from which shipments arrived from Alaska last week, imports have been secured from Latin America, the Asia-Pacific region, Central Asia and Africa, as well as, most recently, Canada,” she said.

“Crude oil is scheduled to arrive from Mexico for the first time in July. We are making progress in diversifying our crude oil supply sources,” she said.

Iran’s effective closure of the vital Strait of Hormuz in retaliation for US-Israeli strikes on Tehran has rattled global energy markets.

The result was insufficient supplies of oil and oil-related products for resource-poor Japan, where businesses have complained about shortages of everything from ink to plastic to medical supplies.

Takaichi added that she will visit Europe from this weekend to attend a Group of Seven meeting in France.

With her fellow leaders, she said she will discuss the importance of energy security as a “representative of Asia,” where severe economic impact of the Middle East conflict is being felt. –AFP

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