World economic forum has listed water security as one of the most tangible and fastest-growing social, political and economic challenges faced today. The high water intensity of global energy generation is creating a need for analysis of water-coal conflict caused by coal power production. Greenpeace has prepared a groundbreaking analysis of the impacts of world’s coal power plants on global water resources, analyzing water demand of existing and proposed coal power capacity. The results show that world’s coal power plants are consuming the amount of water, which could meet the basic requirements for 1 billion people. Globally 44 % of the proposed coal power plants are in areas categorized as high water stress. Among them, a quarter are situated in red-list areas, which are risking of running out of water. Among the globally critical areas are western China, such as Inner Mongolia, and Central India such as Maharastra. In these areas a conflict with other water users like farmers and food production is already happening. Report also outlines ways to avoid the water-coal conflict by stopping licencing of new coal plants in most water stressed areas, by phasing old coal power plants at the end of their lifetime and phasing in low water intensive renewable energy.