India’s green economy could support nearly 1.3 crore jobs by 2035, according to a new iFOREST report, but the opportunity is inseparable from a difficult workforce question: can education, vocational training and industry demand be aligned quickly enough? The report’s estimates place green-sector employment at 98.5 lakh jobs by 2030 before rising to nearly 1.3 crore five years later. Its central warning is that the country may not be able to convert this potential into actual livelihoods unless skilling is organised around local labour markets and real employment demand.
That makes the report more than a forecast about renewable energy or climate-linked industries. It is also a document about how India’s cities and districts will manage economic change. Renewable energy, electric mobility, waste management, pollution control, green hydrogen, the circular economy and nature-based solutions all require workers with different combinations of technical, practical and field-based capabilities. Many of these activities are directly connected to the systems through which urban residents receive energy, travel, dispose of waste, access water and experience climate risks.
The report, titled India’s Green Jobs Moment: Pathways to Build a Future-Ready Workforce, was released at a national conference organised by the International Forum for Environment, Sustainability and Technology and the Skill Council for Green Jobs. It proposes a National Green Jobs and Skilling Mission, supported by corresponding state-level missions and district cells. The institutional design matters because green employment is unlikely to be distributed evenly across the country. Training that responds to a district’s industrial base, transport needs, environmental assets and employer demand would be more relevant than a uniform national target for the number of people trained.
The scale of the opportunity is particularly significant in nature-based solutions. The report estimates that agroforestry, forest restoration and mangrove restoration could account for around 41.5 lakh jobs. It also identifies substantial employment potential in waste management, pollution control and the circular economy. These are not abstract environmental activities. They involve land, public services, local administrations, contractors, community organisations and workers operating at the point where environmental policy meets everyday urban and rural life.
In cities, the employment question is closely tied to the quality of public systems. Waste segregation, material recovery, recycling, pollution monitoring and resource efficiency depend on operational work as much as on policy announcements or new technology. Electric mobility requires not only vehicles and charging infrastructure but also technicians, maintenance workers, battery-related capabilities and transport-system expertise. The report does not provide a city-by-city employment map, but its proposal for district-level cells points to the need for more granular planning than national projections can provide.
The underlying workforce gap is substantial. Indians aged 15 to 29 account for around 27% of the population, while only 5.3% have technical education and about 5% have formal vocational training, according to the report. These figures do not mean that India lacks a young workforce. They indicate that the formal pathways connecting young people to technical occupations remain limited. For green sectors, where roles can involve equipment, safety procedures, maintenance, data, field operations and regulatory compliance, the distinction between having a degree and having job-ready skills becomes especially important.
Shamika Ravi, a member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, described the problem in direct terms at the conference: “Today, the biggest constraint to the growth of every business is finding skilled manpower. We have degrees, but we don’t have skills, and the market is now saying it will reward only skill.” She also said skilling policy should respond to local labour markets rather than simply pursue training targets. Her formulation shifts attention from the number of certificates issued to whether employers can find suitable workers and whether trainees can secure meaningful employment.
That distinction is reflected in the report’s recommendations. It calls for district cells to map local employment demand, connect employers with training institutions, promote apprenticeships and support recognition of prior learning. Each of these functions addresses a different weakness. Demand mapping can reduce the distance between training supply and actual vacancies. Employer links can make curricula more practical. Apprenticeships can provide workplace exposure, while recognition of prior learning can help existing workers move into new occupations without repeating their entire educational journey.
The report also argues that the transition need not erase the experience of workers in conventional industries. Its assessment found that around 89% of coal-mining roles were highly transferable to metal mining. It also found that 90% of automobile-sector roles and 71% of thermal-power roles had high or medium transferability to emerging occupations. These findings suggest that the green transition can involve occupational movement and adaptation, not only the creation of entirely new jobs. The ability to identify transferable skills will be important for workers and regions whose existing economic base is changing.
This is where the policy challenge becomes administrative. A national mission would need to operate across education, skill development, industry and employment institutions. State governments would have to adapt programmes to their economic conditions, while district-level systems would need access to reliable information about employers, infrastructure projects and local workforce capabilities. The report’s proposal places coordination at the centre because no single training provider can independently align schools, vocational institutions, companies and public agencies.
The proposed policy shift also has implications for the duration and design of training. The report notes that around 43% of formal training courses currently last less than six months, while many emerging green occupations require deeper technical and practical preparation. Short courses may be useful for selected tasks, but the report’s argument is that they cannot be the default response to every new occupation. Project-based learning in schools, focused on clean energy, waste, water and climate resilience, is proposed as one way to establish exposure before young people enter the workforce.
The institutional direction is not entirely separate from existing policy processes. Niranjan Kumar Sudhansu, additional secretary in the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, said green jobs and skills were expected to be incorporated into the ongoing revision of the National Policy for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship. iFOREST president and chief executive Chandra Bhushan said India already had the institutions, policy momentum and demographic advantage needed to create a future-ready green workforce, but that these capabilities needed to be connected to emerging demand.
The numbers in the report therefore describe both an opportunity and a test. The projection of 98.5 lakh jobs by 2030 and nearly 1.3 crore by 2035 provides a measure of potential demand, but it does not by itself establish how many jobs will materialise, where they will be located or what wages and working conditions they will offer. The evidence supplied with the report is stronger on the scale of possible employment and the structure of the skills gap than on implementation outcomes. Those questions will depend on how the proposed missions are designed and monitored.
The urban dimension will be particularly important because several identified sectors depend on functioning municipal and regional systems. Waste and circular-economy jobs are shaped by collection and processing arrangements. Electric-mobility employment is linked to transport networks and vehicle ecosystems. Pollution control depends on monitoring and enforcement capacity. Nature-based solutions require coordination between land, water and ecological management. In each case, employment potential is connected to whether public institutions create stable demand for the services and infrastructure involved.
India’s green jobs moment will therefore be determined less by the headline number of projected jobs than by the quality of the bridge between policy, employers and workers. The iFOREST report confirms the scale of the possible opportunity, identifies a limited base of formal technical and vocational training, and points to occupational transferability as a route through economic change. What remains unresolved is whether national and state missions, district cells, education systems and employers can turn those proposals into sustained employment. The revision of the national skills policy and any subsequent mission design will be the next developments to watch.
