Google has signed four new partnerships aimed at supporting water stewardship and sustainable farming practices in watersheds that supply its data centers and offices.

In Chile, Google partnered with Agua Segura and the Bonneville Environmental Foundation, where the partners aim to support the rehabilitation of a storage reservoir and the lining of an irrigation canal in the Maipo River basin. The project aims to improve water security in the semi-arid region and support smallholder farmers who are highly reliant on the availability of water.

In California, Google partnered with Sustainable Conservation to support the development of a manure drip irrigation system that delivers blended freshwater and nutrients to crop root zones. According to the release, dairy farms that use this process save water and protect local groundwater that communities rely on for drinking.

In Taiwan, Google partnered with N-Drip to support a pilot project in Changhua County, on the west of the island, to install precision gravity-powered drip irrigation on rice fields. According to the partners, the project will replace traditional flood irrigation, helping to reduce agricultural water demand while also lowering labor requirements for these farmers.

Finally, in France, Google partnered with xFarm Technologies to support the deployment of its AI-powered irrigation module on potato farms in the Seine River basin. The module is expected to enable farmers to irrigate their fields only when, where, and how much they need to by combining crop needs with environmental data collected in the field.

The projects are part of Google's broader effort in water conservation. In 2021, the tech giant set a target to replenish 120 percent of the freshwater consumption from its offices and data centers by 2030.

In addition to the four projects, Google says it has supported 112 projects across 68 watersheds across the world. It estimates that through these projects it replenished approximately 4.5 billion gallons of water in 2024 alone.

At full implementation, Google estimates that the projects will have the capacity to replenish upwards of 8 billion gallons of water every year.

A full list of the projects can be found in Google's 2025 Water Stewardship Project Portfolio summary report.

Water consumption in data centers is a growing issue for the sector, with demand increasing significantly due to the growth of cloud computing. According to Google’s 2023 environmental report, its data centers consumed 5.2 billion gallons of water during 2023. That’s an average of approximately 500,000 per data center per day.

In addition to Google, several other hyperscalers have set lofty water stewardship goals. In 2021, Meta announced plans to be water-positive by 2030. Following this, in 2022, Amazon Web Services announced it would be water-positive by 2030, returning more water to communities than it uses in its direct operations.