Amazon ends secret data center pacts and pledges $1 billion to host towns

Amazon will no longer require nondisclosure agreements (NDA) with government agencies involved in its data center projects and will adhere to its new Data Center Commitment program designed to address mounting opposition to AI infrastructure, it disclosed on Friday in a blog post. The company also unveiled plans to invest more than $1 billion over five years in communities hosting its facilities. The announcements come as more than 100 data center moratoriums are being considered across the U.S., so AWS wants to make data centers more attractive to locals.

No NDAs

Amazon's decision to no longer require NDAs from government officials working with it is part of the company's newly announced Data Center Commitment program aimed at making data center building more transparent and somewhat less unpleasant to people living nearby. Among other things, the company vows to hold community open houses, disclose information about projects as early as possible, and listen to local concerns as development proceeds. Amazon also vows annual disclosure of its energy consumption and efficiency, water consumption and efficiency, and the proportion of electricity supplied by carbon-free sources.

Speaking of power usage efficiency (PUE), Amazon reports a global PUE of 1.14 for 2025, compared with an industry average of 1.25 and 1.63 for on-premises enterprise data centers. It also says its facilities were 7x more water-efficient than the industry average and that it had reached 75% of its goal to become water-positive by 2030.

Many concerns

Also, new sites will use backup generators compliant with EPA Tier 4 emissions standards. While Amazon emphasizes that new sites will use backup generators meeting EPA Tier 4 emissions standards, the commitment is somewhat ambiguous in general, as the specification limits vary by engine power and generator classes, whereas Amazon does not specify the generator classes it intends to deploy.

The company says an average U.S. data center consumes around 170,000 gallons of water per day, whereas an average Amazon facility uses less than 13,000 gallons, equivalent to 42 U.S. households. However, Amazon does not distinguish between the water consumption of a typical AWS data center designed for general-purpose cloud workloads and newly built AI data centers packed with power-hungry AI accelerators, which certainly have substantially different cooling requirements.

In general, Amazon is trying to counter concerns about the resource requirements of data centers, although some of its comparisons remain rather ambiguous.

When it comes to energy efficiency, the new Built Together initiative will add more than $1 billion to Amazon’s existing community spending. The company expects to provide more than 300,000 students with access to free community-college education over five years. It currently operates three Modular Training Centers, has six more under development, and plans another 16. Each facility can train roughly 2,000–4,000 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%–40% and savings of approximately $700 per household annually. Separately, more than 65 contracted water projects are expected to return over 8 billion gallons annually, more than twice the water Amazon says its data centers consumed in 2025.

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