Azcón on AWS data centers: “It’s not that they’re going to consume water, they’re going to return it”

The President of the Government of Aragon, Jorge Azcón, has defended this Monday the sustainability of the 
present and future plans of Amazon Web Services (AWS) with its four data centers in Huesca, La Cartuja (Zaragoza), Villanueva de Gállego and El Burgo de Ebro (up to 17.5 billion euros are going to be invested). The Aragonese leader has thus denied the ” disinformation ” circulating around these infrastructures and has asserted that not only is the use of water minimized with its operations but that it is committed to returning more than it consumes.

“This project is not just going to consume water, it is going to return it. The water savings that are going to be made are not only going to be cutting-edge in terms of the environment and sustainability, but they are also going to have a positive impact on the water in our Autonomous Community. I think it is extraordinarily important,” said the leader of the DGA this morning after the announcement from the Aura space, on the banks of the Ebro, in which AWS has announced in Zaragoza the launch of three projects to prevent flooding, improve infrastructure and reduce the water footprint throughout the Community thanks to the implementation of tools linked to Artificial Intelligence. 

Azcón recalled that the investment by the American company is “the largest in technology in the history of the community” and insisted that its impact will be positive not only at an economic and social level, but also at an environmental level . “There are still people who think that data centres have a negative impact on water consumption, and this event is extremely important to refute information that often has absolutely nothing to do with reality,” he said.  

At the same time, the former mayor of Zaragoza in the previous legislature has highlighted the “environmental awareness” that Aragon and the Aragonese have developed in recent years and has challenged the Central Government, demanding the need to unblock key infrastructure works such as the Yesa, Almudévar and Mularroya reservoirs.

In this regard, he regretted the lack of acceleration in the actions to be able to continue optimizing the use of water in the community, which, on the other hand, would make it easier for Aragon to continue announcing 
high-profile investments. “If we work well and the necessary infrastructures are built, if we continue presenting efficiency projects like these, we have the possibility of continuing to consume water in a sustainable way and attract more industry, more data centers and irrigate more hectares of crops,” he concluded.

AWS DATA CENTER CONSUMPTION

According to the company’s own figures, Amazon’s data centres in Aragon at full capacity (within approximately a decade) will have an annual consumption of 815,000 cubic metres of water (on average, the consumption of 7,000 households in one year) and the objective, at a global level, is none other than “to provide more water to the community than the centres use”, according to Suzana Curic, manager of AWS in Spain and Portugal. At the end of the year, according to AWS, 40% of this objective was exceeded at a global level. “We are delighted to be investing in Aragon. We are collaborating fully,” she concluded.