Amazon ends confidential data center development agreements and commits $1B to support communities hosting its facilities, increasing transparency in siting negotiations.
Amazon announced Friday that it will no longer require nondisclosure agreements with government agencies involved in its data center projects and unveiled a new Data Center Commitment program aimed at addressing growing opposition to AI infrastructure development. The company will invest more than $1 billion over five years in communities hosting its facilities. The initiatives come as more than 100 data center moratoriums are being considered across the U.S.
As part of the Data Center Commitment program, Amazon has pledged to make data center development more transparent. The company commits to holding community open houses, disclosing project information as early as possible, and engaging with local concerns throughout development. Amazon will also publish annual disclosures on energy consumption and efficiency, water consumption and efficiency, and the proportion of electricity from carbon-free sources.
On energy efficiency, Amazon reports a global power usage efficiency (PUE) of 1.14 for 2025, compared with an industry average of 1.25 and 1.63 for on-premises enterprise data centers. The company says its facilities were 7 times more water-efficient than the industry average and has achieved 75 percent of its goal to become water-positive by 2030. New data center sites will use backup generators that comply with EPA Tier 4 emissions standards, though the company has not specified which generator classes it will deploy, leaving some ambiguity in the commitment.
Amazon cites data showing that an average U.S. data center consumes approximately 170,000 gallons of water daily, while an average Amazon facility uses fewer than 13,000 gallons—equivalent to the consumption of 42 U.S. households. However, the company does not distinguish between water consumption in general-purpose cloud data centers and newly built AI facilities powered by water-intensive AI accelerators, which have substantially different cooling requirements.
The Built Together initiative will add more than $1 billion to Amazon's existing community spending. Over five years, the company expects to provide more than 300,000 students with free community college education. Amazon currently operates three Modular Training Centers, with six more under development and another 16 planned. Each facility can train 2,000 to 4,000 people annually, with Amazon targeting as many as 100,000 trained workers per year by the end of 2028.
Amazon also plans energy-efficiency upgrades for more than 300 schools and community buildings and 30,000 homes, targeting energy-bill reductions of 20 to 40 percent and savings of approximately $700 per household annually. Additionally, more than 65 contracted water projects are expected to return over 8 billion gallons annually—more than twice the water Amazon reports its data centers consumed in 2025.