This was perhaps a missed opportunity for India to spotlight a core domestic challenge: The scale of workforce preparation required for a young, populous, rapidly growing country seeking to reach net zero, points out Radha Roy Biswas.
A striking omission at the recently concluded COP30 in Belem, Brazil, was the near-absence of discussion on jobs and workers.
As in past years, the summit primarily focused on climate finance, adaptation funding, and equity debates, but offered little strategic direction on the workforce essential to any successful energy transition.
One might argue that COPs are structured around international negotiations on mitigation, finance, and national commitments (NDCs), and that labour-market restructuring and workforce development are inherently domestic issues, shaped by sovereign labour laws and social-support systems.
Yet COPs ought gain renewed credibility and counter the cynicism and sense of resignation now surrounding them by devoting clearer attention to the human dimension.
Addressing the livelihood impacts of energy transition is second only to safeguarding life and safety as a global or national priority.
Jobs, skills, and social stability are collective imperatives, with opportunities for shared learning, even if specific policy responses remain country-specific.
Against this backdrop, it is unsurprising that India's position and takeaways at COP30 focused on the preset priorities and mirrored the global omission.
Still, this was perhaps a missed opportunity for India to spotlight a core domestic challenge: The scale of workforce preparation required for a young, populous, rapidly growing country seeking to reach net zero.
This omission is particularly noteworthy because, for the first time, one of India's leading energy-policy institutions has placed workforce issues at the centre of its strategic thinking.
The Energy and Resources Institute's (TERI) latest white paper, Looking into the Next Decade: Emerging Energy Technologies and Workforce Transformation in India, developed for the Indian Chamber of Commerce, devotes roughly half its substantive content to jobs, skills, and workforce readiness.
This represents a decisive pivot from TERI's earlier net-zero frameworks, in which workforce concerns received only cursory mention.
Unfortunately, this shift is not reflected in other influential public or private Indian or international entities.
The office of the principal scientific adviser's most recent strategic document, 'India Energy Transformation Roadmap 2025' contains no structured workforce analysis, devoting exactly 1.5 pages out of 180 to 'human capital', with no numbers provided on gross job loss or regional disaggregation.
The Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), along with the Skill Council for Green Jobs (SCGJ), continues to focus almost exclusively on renewable energy jobs, offering limited insight into employment transitions in hard-to-abate, core industrial sectors -- coal, thermal power, steel, cement, conventional transport, and manufacturing, that employ millions of formal and informal workers.
These omissions matter: The direct and ripple economic effects of transition in such sectors, especially in coal-dependent regions, are profound and cannot be ignored.
Major consulting firms are similarly limited. Recent reports from PwC, McKinsey, and EY treat workforce issues as side effects of decarbonization rather than a pillar that requires strategic planning.
Workforce analysis, when present, accounts for 3% to 5% of total content, typically framed as a consequence of transition rather than a precondition for success and leapfrogging.
TERI's report, despite its narrower focus on emerging energy and related sectors prioritised by the GoI -- green hydrogen, waste-to-energy, clean-energy inputs for semiconductors, and AI/data-centre infrastructure, is helpful.
It maps the workforce development required and highlights a widening skills gap, particularly among technicians, engineers, and digital specialists.
It calls for training expansion, curriculum redesign, and targeted capacity building that could be applied across the transition landscape.
Notably, it introduces mechanisms such as stackable micro-credentials and recognition-of-prior-learning (RPL) pathways to enhance overall skill capacity.
This is critical for mitigating displacement as new technologies scale up.
The TERI report's biggest contribution is that it makes a compelling case: India's clean-energy ambitions depend as much on a future-ready workforce as on mobilising capital and deploying technology.
This is a welcome departure from the prevailing techno-economic orientation of earlier studies. Yet important gaps remain.
This report does not attempt to provide any quantitative estimate of jobs likely to be created or lost by 2030 or 2050, data that is crucial for strategic planning and the gap to be addressed.
Nor does it directly address workforce transitions in legacy fossil-fuel industries or hard-to-abate manufacturing sectors.
Without this analysis, India lacks a clear picture of where labour displacement will occur, how many workers will require reskilling, and what social protections need be undertaken to support displaced workers.
Perhaps the most telling detail is that TERI's report was prepared for a business, rather than a government, platform.
While valuable, it does not carry the imprimatur of a policy blueprint. It is clear that so far, there is no credible attempt to quantify the jobs issue in energy transition in an actionable way where both the central and state governments understand the exigent situation looming ahead.
Without a coordinated and coherent national strategy, workforce issues will likely remain unaddressed and peripheral.
For India, and indeed for any country, any energy transition plan that does not prioritise workers and upping skills is likely to be uneven, poorly implemented, and even contested.
It may even escalate into the political space and the damage will be where it hurts most and to the most vulnerable -- the workforce.
Policymakers, negotiators, ministries, and think-tanks shaping India's stance at future COPs must elevate workforce questions to the same level as technology, finance, and climate change equity.
The essential question, 'Where are the workers in our transition story?', should be considered in sync and treated as unavoidable, not optional, in national and global climate deliberations.
Radha Roy Biswas is a Public Policy Specialist and Researcher - Workforce, Higher Education and Regional Development
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff
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