Four years ago, Akshay Kadam walked into Enviria, a clean energy company specialising in commercial rooftop solar systems based in Frankfurt, Germany. He became “the first brown-skinned person” in a workforce of fewer than 50.
The 31-year-old mechanical engineer had already spent two and a half years as a project engineer at Waaree Energies, headquartered in Mumbai, India. His job was to manage solar photovoltaic installations for residential and commercial clients, experience that was not immediately enough to secure a job within Germany’s solar industry.
First, he had to get a master’s in engineering and industrial management from a private German university. He footed the tuition fee, prepared for interviews using broken German and eventually accepted an internship at Enviria. Three months later, he got the job.
“My bosses here found my Indian experience a bit strange, as in Germany, every employee is assigned clearly defined tasks,” he tells Dialogue Earth. “In India, my day to day responsibilities gave me exposure to both the solar energy generation or DC [direct current] infrastructure side and to the AC [alternating current] grid connection side. Work-wise, the concepts were the same in both countries, but the norms and protocols in Germany are different and I had to educate myself about those.”
Kadam is one of more than 10,000 Indian solar and renewable energy professionals currently working on international projects or being employed by overseas organisations, as estimated by the recruitment services company Prism.
India is currently building one of the world’s largest renewables workforces. The Council on Energy, Environment and Water estimates that India’s clean energy transition could generate more than 4.4 million jobs by 2030. As Prism’s co-founder Nikhil Vaidya tells Dialogue Earth: “India has quickly become one of the world’s largest renewable energy talent hubs.”
Germany needs more skilled workers as it races to expand its installed solar capacity: the country aims to reach 215 GW by 2030. Germany’s Institute for Employment Research estimates that the wind power and photovoltaics sectors alone will need around 160,000 additional workers by 2030.
Though Kadam found his own way to this job, India and Germany have been attempting to build a formal skills exchange channel for the renewables sector. The Germany Solar Association (BSW) and India’s Skill Council for Green Jobs signed a memorandum of understanding in 2023 that envisaged placing at least 20 Indian Suryamitra (trained solar technicians and electricians) in Germany’s solar sector. As of July 2026, however, not one Suryamitra placement had been verified via this framework.
In the meantime, private recruiters have started building their own pipelines to connect Indian renewables professionals with overseas projects.
Reporting from both India and Germany, Dialogue Earth investigates this case study of international recruitment for the energy transition.
Made in Germany
A 2025 study by the NewClimate Institute, a German research body, predicted labour shortages could soon become a constraint on the energy transition globally. To triple renewable power capacity by 2030, the number of workers in power generation worldwide may need to rise from 12.5 million (as of 2021) to 47 million, with much of the growth concentrated in manufacturing, installation and operations. “Emerging economies benefit from younger populations and wage incentives in the energy transition sectors, but face education gaps and outflows of skilled workers,” the study noted.
This goal came to prominence during COP28, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change’s annual negotiations held in 2023. At the summit, hosted by the UAE, 123 countries endorsed a pledge to both triple global renewable energy capacity and double the global average annual rate of energy efficiency improvements by 2030.
The initiative was packaged by the COP28 presidency with a voluntary initiative to reduce carbon dioxide and methane emissions, which was signed by 50 oil and gas companies.
According to the International Renewable Energy Agency, India’s renewables sector already supports nearly one million jobs, with photovoltaics accounting for the largest share. As India works towards its target of 500 GW of non-fossil-fuel capacity by 2030, demand for skilled workers is only expected to grow.
Germany has been lowering its formal barriers to skilled migration – at least on paper. Legislation active since 2023 enables an experience-based pathway for qualified workers to join one of Germany’s non-regulated professions, without the need for qualifications that formally match German standards.
These workers generally need at least two years of relevant professional experience from within the previous five years, a qualification recognised by the state in which it was issued, and a job offer meeting the applicable salary threshold of EUR 3,800 (USD 4,400) per month. German language proficiency is not a statutory requirement, although employers can impose their own language requirements.
“Technically, this makes it possible for millions of workers from India to come here,” says Moritz von Recklinghausen, founder and managing director of Green Professionals. His company, based in Berlin, recruits technicians and electricians from non-European Union countries, particularly India, and connects them directly with German renewable energy companies.
The idea won Green Professionals a EUR 150,000 grant from 10,000 Tage. Launched in 2023, this programme creates pathways into green jobs using funds from Germany’s federal education and research ministry. Green Professionals spent a year identifying and preparing Indian candidates, including helping them navigate German language training and skills recognition.
As it turned out, finding workers was not the problem. Green Professionals ran into administrative hurdles following changes to labour regulations and, more significantly, reluctance among German employers to hire non-German speakers.
The language gap
Lakshey Sehgal runs Climate Trainers, a company training professionals in India and Germany for the solar sector. It also advises Green Professionals on candidate selections. He calls this German language expectation from employers “unrealistic”.
“They are also not paying the top-grade German salaries for such technicians, either,” Sehgal tells Dialogue Earth.
According to Sehgal, German solar and electrical firms offer Indian technicians around EUR 2,800 gross a month, or roughly EUR 1,750 after deductions. That may be enough for a single worker to relocate, he says, but difficult to support a family with. “They are better off working in the Middle East, where they can make better savings.”
Due to this recurring language hurdle, Green Professionals eventually changed its business model. Instead of recruiting Indian workers for other German companies, it has set up a company of its own, specialising in power lines, and began hiring workers directly. The company expects to bring 6-12 Indian workers to Germany this year. Their primary working language, according to Von Recklinghausen, will be Hindi.
If you come here as a student, you have time to integrate and familiarise with the culture here but when you come here for jobs, the pressure to earn is quite highAkshay Kadam, mechanical engineer, Enviria
“I had interviewed around 2,000 people, from which Green Professionals scouted 25-30 people who were rock star electricians in their own way,” says Sehgal. “Only two of them got placed in a German company.”
Sehgal wishes to bring the rest to Germany, designing a six-month course to bridge the differences between Indian and German electrician training; Green Professionals planned to provide German-language modules and help candidates navigate other practical requirements. For example, obtaining German driving licences, which the company considers essential for many electrician jobs.
Green Professionals’ training programme, financed by 10,000 Tage, had a cohort of 25 participants. But differences between Indian and German qualification and certification systems made it difficult to assemble a sufficiently large group of candidates to progress through the programme.
Germany’s new skilled immigration legislation has hit a fundamental stumbling block: the infrastructure needed to turn entry into employment remains difficult to navigate.
The workaround
Still, some private recruitment companies are actively placing Indian renewables workers abroad. Dynamic Staffing Services, a Delhi-based recruiter with particular expertise in the German market, says it has placed more than 500 skilled Indian solar installers with German projects. The company provides employers with recruitment, training, visa and compliance support.
Other Indian renewable energy companies, as well as recruitment and training firms, are building international pathways for solar workers. Sterling and Wilson Renewable Energy, for example, which recruits Indian professionals for international solar projects, operates across 28 countries. Meanwhile, companies such as Waaree have developed formal training and certification programmes for solar installers.
Another way German companies are partially filling their worker gap is through subcontracting. Sehgal says some of this labour is sourced through companies based in countries including Croatia and Bulgaria, which then deploy workers to Germany. This labour includes Indian workers who, according to Sehgal, can end up getting paid wages well below Germany’s standard minimum for the trade.
Beyond numbers shared by recruitment companies, there is no publicly available central database of Indian renewable energy professionals currently working overseas.
India’s dilemma
In India, much of the renewables work remains informal. “If you look at rooftop solar, you need three or four people to set up the structure, and one electrician can manage multiple sites,” explains Sehgal. “Informal labourers are not on payrolls; companies call them as needed. Many companies don’t even hire electricians full-time. They keep them as per the site requirements.”
Kadam is keen to underline that the need to be adaptable makes India’s renewables workforce well-prepared for international opportunities: “In India, one does multiple things in the solar sector. My designation was that of project engineer, but I also handled sales and marketing. There are multiple challenges in India: the space to work is limited; you have to ensure load is sustained properly; and because of the high-rise buildings in India, you need to be very careful with load management.”
India’s renewables sector also struggles to attract talent, notes Sehgal. The country’s expanding gig economy, for example food delivery and quick-commerce companies, can offer an immediate source of income – zero years of prerequisite training. And in Germany, adds Kadam, the renewables market is harder for new companies to enter, which limits the potential for competition.
For Indian renewables workers who aspire to move to Germany, Kadam says it helps to study in the country first: “If you come here as a student, you have time to integrate and familiarise with the culture here but when you come here for jobs, the pressure to earn is quite high.”
In Kadam’s direct experience, this sector is doggedly diversifying, in spite of all the barriers: four years since he joined Enviria, he is now one of eight Indian engineers at the company.
