For years, some towns found out about a giant data center only after the deal was done. Local officials had signed nondisclosure agreements, so neighbours were the last to know.
Amazon now says it has stopped doing that. In a long post, AWS chief executive Matt Garman wrote: “We no longer use nondisclosure agreements with the government agencies we work with on our projects” [1]. In the same post, Amazon announced a community programme called Built Together, which it says will add more than $1 billion over five years to what it already spends.
It’s a direct answer to a growing backlash against AI data centers. It also leaves some big questions open.
What did Amazon announce?
Garman’s post did two things [1].
First, it set out an Amazon Data Center Commitment, a written list of how the company says it will run these projects. Dropping NDAs with government agencies is one line in it. Amazon also promises to publish its energy use, water use, efficiency and share of carbon-free energy every year.
Second, it launched Built Together, starting in the US. Amazon says it will add “more than $1 billion over the next five years” on top of its existing community spending, across job training and education, energy bills, water and energy saving, and local priorities.
All the figures below are Amazon’s own.
- Free degrees: Amazon estimates it will connect more than 300,000 students in data center communities to free community college degrees over five years. It says this will launch “in the next few months.”
- Training centres: Three are running, six are being built and 16 more are planned. Amazon says each trains about 2,000 to 4,000 people a year, with a goal of preparing up to 100,000 workers a year by the end of 2028.
- Energy grants: Amazon is targeting more than 300 schools and community buildings and more than 30,000 homes over five years. It claims each household will save about $700 a year, with bills cut by 20% to 40%.
- Water projects: Amazon says more than 65 contracted water projects should return over 8 billion gallons a year, which it says is more than double its data centers’ water use in 2025.
Amazon also says it has already given more than $1 billion over the past three years to US communities where it has a significant data center presence [1].
Why now?
Because the pushback is getting serious. Garman says more than 100 data center moratoriums are being considered across the US [1]. His warning: “If these measures are enacted, the U.S. could be writing its own losing ticket to this race, and the consequences would last generations.”
TechCrunch, which covered the announcement on 3 October, describes NDAs as a significant part of that backlash [2]. It quotes environmental campaigner Erin Brockovich, from earlier comments, saying transparency is a top complaint, including “local officials who signed NDAs before their neighbors knew a project was being considered.” TechCrunch also cites Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei describing the AI backlash as “fundamentally a crisis of trust.”
TechCrunch also reports that New York has announced a one-year moratorium on permits for large data centers [2].
What is Amazon pushing back on?
Much of Garman’s post argues against what he calls myths about data centers. These are Amazon’s claims [1]:
- Water: An average Amazon data center uses “less than 13,000 gallons per day,” and data centers make up about 0.5% of direct industrial water use in the US.
- Generators: Backup generators sit idle 99.9% of the time, about 10 hours a year. “The truth is data center generators almost never run,” Garman wrote. Amazon says new sites will use EPA Tier 4 generators, the US Environmental Protection Agency’s cleanest category for this kind of engine.
- Efficiency: Amazon reports a 2025 global power usage effectiveness of 1.14, against an industry average it puts at 1.25. Power usage effectiveness compares a building’s total power with the power its computers actually use, so closer to 1.0 means less is lost to cooling and other overhead.
What do critics say it leaves out?
TechCrunch raises several counterpoints [2]:
- Water may be undercounted. Amazon’s figures seem to ignore the water used to generate the electricity and make the chips. Scientists say independent study is needed, because there are no federal or state reporting rules.
- Power prices. An independent watchdog said data centers were the main cause of a 76% year-on-year price rise on America’s largest electrical grid.
- Emissions. A planned Amazon data center in Texas is permitted to release 33 million tons of carbon dioxide a year.
None of these points appears in Amazon’s post, and Amazon’s own figures haven’t been independently checked.
What we still don’t know
- When the NDAs stopped. The post doesn’t give a date.
- What happens to old NDAs. It doesn’t say whether existing agreements have been released.
- Private deals. The pledge covers government agencies. It doesn’t say whether NDAs with private parties, such as landowners or contractors, continue.
- Where the $1 billion goes. There’s no breakdown by community or by year.
- What locals think. We didn’t find a response from local officials or the named critics to this specific announcement.
The Bottom Line
Dropping NDAs with government agencies is a real change, aimed at the exact complaint critics raise most: decisions made before neighbours know. The $1 billion pledge, the free degrees and the energy grants are big promises, but they’re Amazon’s numbers, with no breakdown yet. The water and power arguments are where the fight will continue, because Amazon’s figures and its critics’ figures are measuring different things. If Amazon really publishes its energy and water data every year, as it says it will, that may matter more than any single promise in the post.
Sources
- Matt Garman, AWS chief executive, post on About Amazon announcing the Amazon Data Center Commitment and Built Together (publication date not shown on the page we opened). https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/amazon-data-centers-built-together
- Anthony Ha, TechCrunch, 3 October 2026. https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/03/amazon-responds-to-data-center-backlash-says-it-no-longer-uses-ndas/
