Why capability must sit at the heart of the green transition

There is a version of the green energy transition that looks impressive from a distance and devastating up close. Renewable targets are met. Carbon numbers improve. Governments announce milestones. And somewhere in the background, a generation of workers discovers that the industry they spent their careers building has been quietly retired, and no one thought to bring them along. It is the pattern that repeats itself every time industrial transformation is led by policy targets rather than by the people those targets depend on.

Capability transformation is the missing chapter in most green transition strategies. Leaders understand the technology shift and the capital requirement. The aspect they negligently disregard is the human infrastructure essential to ensure the transition is executed the right way at ground level. The WEF Future of Jobs Report 2025 makes a firm estimate that 22% of global jobs will face distressive disruptions by 2030. 

Although this will result in the creation of 170 million new roles, the cost of this new possibility will amount to challenging a huge active labour force of 92 million. The green transition is a key instrument in this upcoming disruption. But job creation statistics do not translate into workforce readiness without deliberate, structured effort in between.

The numbers on the supply side are alarming. The LinkedIn Green Skills Report 2025 found that green talent demand is growing nearly twice as fast as workers are acquiring green skills: 7.7% hiring growth against 4.3% skills growth. 

By 2030, projections show a 260% rise in green jobs against a 60% increase in professionals qualified to fill them. The REN21 Global Status Report 2025 puts the shortfall at 7 million skilled workers. And yet 68% of energy-sector degree programmes worldwide remain oriented toward fossil fuels. The education system is still training for the economy that is leaving.

This is the leadership failure at the centre of the transition. Organisations and governments set green targets with one hand and underfund the capability pipeline needed to reach them with the other. The result is a sector simultaneously short on skilled labour and in the process of displacing people with relevant, transferable technical knowledge. The problem is not a shortage of human potential. It is a shortage of institutional will to connect existing capability to emerging need.

Leading capability transformation well requires understanding what it actually is. It is not a training programme. It is not an ESG checkbox. We need to nurture and uphold a structural commitment to finding out what skills our workforce currently carries. This will become a foundation for us to constructively map those skills to where the industry is heading, and to build pathways before the gap becomes irreversible.

Organisations getting this right are not waiting for governments to mandate reskilling. They are treating their existing workforce as the primary talent pool for green roles. The LinkedIn report's key finding is that for the first time, the majority of green hires globally are not entering traditional green roles. They are professionals in finance, operations, and logistics who carry green skills. Organisations that invested in cross-functional upskilling are finding they already have more green capability than they realised.

The mechanics of mobilising the transformation well are clearer than most acknowledge. Skills mapping before displacement, not after. Reskilling programmes designed with the industries absorbing the newly trained workers, not by HR departments with no sight of operational demand. Internal mobility structures that allow movement across functions as roles transform, rather than exit and rehire. 

Measurement that tracks capability applied, not just training hours logged. The WEF's Reskilling Revolution, which has mobilised commitments reaching over 856 million people globally, consistently finds that programmes tied to employment outcomes outperform generic training by a significant margin.

One dimension is almost always overlooked. The LinkedIn report identifies what it calls green skills shyness: workers who already carry green competencies but do not disclose them. Organisations are sitting on capability they cannot see. Workers are being passed over for roles they qualify for. Closing the gap is partly a supply problem. In many cases, it is also a visibility problem. Skills recognition frameworks matter as much as training pipelines.

The green transition will not be won on targets alone. It will be won or lost on whether the people required to build and sustain the new energy economy are ready for their roles. That readiness does not emerge from ambition. It emerges from deliberate investment in human capability, by organisations that understand the workforce is not an afterthought to the transition.

Nazma Sultana is an experienced technology director and strategic business leader. Nafis Ehsas Chowdhury is a human resources management professional and independent columnist.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and views of The Business Standard.