water accounting

Baseline Footprint

The creation of aysra required cloud compute and development time, which consumes water through data center cooling and the electricity that powers it. Baseline consumption was measured at approximately 255 gallons across the platform's first six months of operation.

To account for this, aysra purchased BEF Water Restoration Certificates equal to more than 100× that figure.

Each certificate represents 1,000 gallons of freshwater restored to a stream, river, or wetland through verified flow restoration projects.

Ongoing Commitment

As aysra grows, it will purchase verified water restoration equal to at least 1,000% of operational water consumption, renewed annually.

This multiplier exists to:

• account for measurement uncertainty
• cover indirect water from upstream electricity generation
• mirror the carbon commitment as aysra is accountable for both atmospheric and freshwater impacts

Unlike carbon removal, water restoration is a flow instrument: certificates are renewed each year as water is consumed, not banked.

Water commitments are tied to system usage, not revenue.

Measurement Boundary

current scope includes

• direct cooling water at the data center (Council Bluffs, Iowa)
• indirect water consumed at upstream electricity generation
• per-call AI inference water, derived from internal logs
• cloud compute and storage water

current scope excludes

• employee household water consumption
• embodied water from hardware manufacturing
• food, agriculture, and other personal-life water

As measurement precision improves, scope may expand.

Restoration Standards

aysra prioritizes:

• third-party verified projects (Bonneville Environmental Foundation, National Fish and Wildlife Foundation)
• basin-matched restoration where possible (Missouri River basin, western U.S.)
• long-term flow restoration via water rights agreements and natural-system repair
• registry-tracked credits to prevent double-counting (S&P Global/IHS Markit)

Water restoration is selected over efficiency commitments alone, because reduced consumption does not return water to systems already stressed.