Microsoft has claimed that it has achieved water positivity across its operations, five years ahead of its 2030 goal. The company claimed to have replenished more water than it withdrew across its global operations in the financial year of 2025.

In a blog post, the hyperscaler said it has also achieved a near-90 percent improvement in data center water use effectiveness (WUE) since the early 2000s, reducing its average from 2.3 liters per kilowatt-hour to 0.27 L/kWh across its owned fleet in 2025. WUE is calculated by the total annual volume of water consumed (in liters) divided by the total energy used by the IT equipment.

In addition, Microsoft said it has also reduced water use intensity by 25 percent against a 2022 baseline, putting it more than halfway toward a 40 percent reduction target for the decade.

The last time Microsoft fully disclosed its water consumption was in 2022, when it reportedly used 1.69 billion gallons of water, a 34 percent increase from the year before. The apparent gains since then have been attributed to a shift from evaporative cooling to direct air and liquid cooling systems. It also cited a move to a closed-loop direct-to-chip liquid cooling system, introduced in 2024, with all new data center builds expected to deploy it going forward.

The company says approximately 90 percent of its 2025-owned fleet now operates on low- to zero-water cooling systems, with water required less than five percent of the time in cooler regions such as Dublin and Amsterdam, and up to 40 percent of the time in hotter climates like Phoenix.

Microsoft has also reportedly expanded its use of recycled and non-potable water sources. In Quincy, Washington, Singapore, and San Antonio, Texas, recycled or non-potable water accounts for 74 percent, 99 percent, and 79 percent of consumption, respectively.

In addition, the company has deployed rainwater harvesting systems in the Netherlands, Sweden, and Ireland, with further installations planned across Canada, the UK, Finland, Italy, South Africa, and Austria.

While the company touted significant advancements, concerns still permeate the water sustainability of data center operations. The company acknowledged that sustaining water-positive performance over time as the fleet grows remains an ongoing challenge and said it is exploring zonal cooling architectures to more precisely align cooling approaches with different hardware types.

Amazon also recently announced its water usage figures, revealing that the hyperscaler consumed 2.5 billion gallons of water last year. Amazon reiterated its goal to be water positive by 2030, and said that it was about 75 percent of the way there.