📄 Abstract
The transition to net-zero emissions is simultaneously a technological, regulatory and human-capital transition. Firms and national skilling systems are being asked to fund green learning-and-development (L&D) programmes years before the labour-demand payoff of that investment is visible in wage or hiring data. This paper synthesises the present evidence on the ESG (green) employment premium and sets it against the labour-demand projections that accompany net-zero transition pathways, in order to ask whether current green L&D investment is calibrated to where demand is actually forming. Drawing on linked employer-employee wage data, global hiring and skills-supply indices, and sectoral employment projections to 2030 and 2047, the paper finds a persistent and quantifiable gap: green-skill hiring is growing roughly 1.8 times faster than green-skill supply, the measured green wage premium (6.6 per cent, net of worker sorting) is less than half the brown-occupation premium it is meant to eventually displace, and India's projected green workforce would need to expand more than twenty-fold between 2024 and the late 2040s to match stated policy ambition. The paper develops a conceptual framework linking six green L&D investment levers to labour-demand transmission channels, and situates the analysis within a six-strand literature review spanning green human resource management, labour economics of green skills, wage-premium econometrics, decarbonisation labour-market policy, talent and leadership readiness, and India's skilling infrastructure. It closes with implications for HR investment sequencing, education-training provider capacity, and policy design, and identifies the data limitations that currently prevent a causal estimate of the L&D-to-labour-demand elasticity.
🏷️ Keywords
📚 How to Cite:
Dr. N Subbukrishna Sastry, Dr. Manjula Mallya M , GREEN SKILLING INVESTMENT AND EMPLOYMENT DEMAND IN THE NET-ZERO TRANSITION , Volume 13 , Issue 9, September 2026, EPRA International Journal of Environmental Economics, Commerce and Educational Management(ECEM) , Pages: 1 - 10 ,