When college graduate Mona Kumari came across a pamphlet circulating in her neighbourhood about a government-sponsored solar training course, she quickly signed up, hopeful of finding work easily at the many solar parks dotting her home state of Rajasthan in northwestern India.
“I had heard about the solar boom, that solar was this big industry and that there would be many opportunities. I joined the course for that reason. I wanted to financially support my family,” the 23-year-old said ahead of the COP29 UN climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan.
She lived her dream during the three-month course, which is being offered across more than 500 centres in the South Asian nation to feed an ever-growing demand for green skills.
“I loved the training. I learned how to install solar panels, where to place them – not in the shade but where the sun’s rays fall on them – how to connect the wires. I was even taken to a project site for installations during the training,” said Kumari, whose father works as a labourer in the local market and is the only earning member in her family of seven. “I was looking forward to starting work.”
But her parents did not allow her to take up work in the distant, remote places where solar projects are located without transport and washrooms. This constitutes a societal roadblock women face in joining India’s green energy workforce, according to officials overseeing India’s skilling programmes.
About 2,700 km away in Baku, Azerbaijan, which is hosting COP29, campaigners this week expressed despair over gender getting overlooked at the summit.
Negotiators have struggled to get agreement on renewing a programme to advance gender-responsive climate policies, as socially conservative countries stood in the way. Activists feared this would derail action to plug gender gaps like those already emerging in the green workforce as countries like India build their clean energy capacity.
The outside of the COP29 venue in Baku, Azerbaijan (Photo: Climate Home / Megan Rowling)
Green job roles not yet gendered
India is aiming for net-zero emissions by 2070 and a total shift to clean energy by 2050 – and has the potential to create 35 million green jobs by 2047, according to a government report on India’s green skills landscape.
But men make up 85% of all candidates who have undergone green skills training, data from the Skill Council for Green Jobs shows. Globally, women make up 32% of the clean energy workforce, according to a 2019 gender report by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). In India, this figure stands at just 11%.
“In this green transition, job roles are not (yet) culturally determined as feminine or masculine and it is a great opportunity to bring both men and women at the same level,” said Lorena Aguilar, a gender expert who leads the Kaschak Institute for Social Justice for Women and Girls and has developed strategies and action plans to mainstream gender in U.N. initiatives.
About two-thirds of the nearly 14 million jobs globally in the renewable energy sector are in Asia, according to an International Renewable Agency annual review last year, with solar the fastest-growing sector.
COP29 Bulletin Day 10: Battle over gender language leaves a bitter taste
While solar has thrown up jobs for technicians and helpers post-installation, these roles require schooling up to twelfth and ninth grade respectively, which many girls don’t have in rural India.
“Many of them drop out of school to help in agriculture,” said Arpit Sharma, who heads India’s Skill Council for Green Jobs, which was launched by the Indian government less than a decade ago and acts as the interface between industry and candidates it trains for the green sector.
Sharma said reluctance among families to send their daughters to a “male-dominated site” and not having toilets at projects were key reasons for low numbers of women.
“Women are able to do this work, but the conditions are not conducive. We are speaking to industry about creating at least washrooms on site, and training centres to induct more women,” said Sharma, adding that his expectation from COP29 was for the industry to come forward with finance for green skills training.
Greater focus on and funding of green skills will need to be accompanied with more dialogue on women’s participation at this global climate summit to help overcome mindset barriers, analysts said.
More women at top level, fewer on the ground
In India, coordinators at centres offering green skills training said they tell women applicants that these jobs are in remote locations and may not be ideal for them, which has led to very few signing up for the programmes.
This despite initiatives that have garnered global attention over the years. At COP29, speakers have cited the barefoot engineers case study of women spearheading solar panel installations and maintenance in a Rajasthan village for years and training other women to do so. And in India’s electric vehicle sector, women dominate shop-floors.
“More women are taking up climate and environmental sciences for their higher studies. In discussions on climate issues, I see a roomful of women. They are developers, are in think-tanks and in research,” said Vibhuti Garg, director for South Asia at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), who was at COP29 last week.
At the ground level, however, for women from some of India’s most marginalised communities, opportunities for learning and skilling are not always accessible.
“Creating a workforce from the community should be the goal. Industry needs to train students from the beginning. This would plug [the] demand-supply gap in skills. But that level of planning is not happening,” said Santosh Patnaik of Climate Action Network South Asia, adding that discussions at COP29 must focus on the needs of communities.
Green skills lag growing demand
A new LinkedIn report shows that by 2030, nearly one in five jobs requiring green skills could lack green talent to fill them, ballooning to one in two jobs by 2050 – a talking point at the ongoing COP29.
At multiple sessions on the demand-supply gap in green skills at the summit, industry leaders spoke of creating awareness and interest among young people for these jobs, through things like reality TV shows, and how a green future could see considerable labour workforce migration to plus these gaps.
“The demand for green skills is growing at twice the rate as supply. There is an intense competition for green skills… the intensity of competition will only grow,” said Allen Blue, co-founder of LinkedIn, speaking at a panel discussion on green skills in Baku last week.
LinkedIn co-founder Allen Blue (centre) at a panel discussion on green skills at the Baku Olympic Stadium, the COP29 venue in Baku Azerbaijan, November 15, 2024. (Photo: Roli Srivastava)
“Solar for She” push
This year, India launched a massive decentralised rooftop solar project, with the aim of providing free electricity to 10 million households nationwide to improve energy access, build renewable capacity and create jobs. Vendors have been enlisted from across the country to train youth to install solar panels.
While large solar projects don’t create jobs at scale for both men or women, decentralised projects such as this can, said Ajay Mathur, director general of the International Solar Alliance (ISA), speaking at COP29, adding that past experiences have shown that women make for a better solar workforce.
“The industry realises that. Women stick to jobs. But preliminary numbers, by far and large, do not reflect that,” he said, adding that the ISA has a “Solar for She” initiative to bring in more women into solar globally.
Back in India, the rooftop solar installation work is underway, with youth being enlisted for a 15-day training course to carry out the work, in and around their villages, a perfect opportunity for skilled women seeking solar work not too far from their homes.
But two on-the-ground coordinators of the training told Climate Home they were taking men as there was use of heavy machinery, as well as lifting and installation of panels on rooftops – tasks they believed were difficult for women.
In Rajasthan, Kumari said she hadn’t heard of the rooftop solar project. “I can work all hours, I have no difficulty lifting heavy weights. I have done this. I know this work,” she said.
This article was produced as part of the COP29 Cross-Border Energy Transition Reporting Fellowship, a programme organised by Clean Energy Wire and the Stanley Center for Peace and Security.
The post Weak gender focus at COP29 risks leaving women behind in greener future appeared first on Climate Home News.
Weak gender focus at COP29 risks leaving women behind in greener future
SYDNEY, Thursday 30 October 2026 — In response to reports that the Albanese government is set to introduce draft legislation this year that would seek to ban data centres in Australia’s suburbs, Joe Rafalowicz, Head of Climate and Energy at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said:
“These reports are a testament to the growing community opposition to these completely inappropriate AI factories that have sprung up across our suburbs, and Big Tech corporations should take heed — the data centre build-out must not happen without the endorsement of the Australian people.
“But the government can’t simply ship this problem out to regional Australia without addressing the fundamental issues with this extractive new industry.
“We’re already seeing a trend of AI data centre proposals moving to the regions, in areas that are more water-scarce, more environmentally sensitive, and next to sources of fracked and coal seam gas to support their massive BYO gas-fired power plans — a pattern we’ve seen play out in the United States.
“From the Beetaloo Basin in the NT to the Western Downs in Qld, we’re seeing a wave of AI data centre proposals that would see new gas fast-tracked to support their massive energy demand, and threaten to completely derail Australia’s energy transition.
“Just as suburban Australians are asking, “what for?”, regional communities like Berry Springs and Dalby do not want dirty data centres setting up shop with absolutely no benefit to their communities. Greenpeace is calling for a moratorium on AI data centre developments until strict and enforceable safeguards are in place to protect our climate and our communities.”
-ENDS-
Media contact
Kate O’Callaghan on +61 406 231 892 or kate.ocallaghan@greenpeace.org
AI data centre ban in suburbs would not address fundamental issues: Greenpeace
In the thick of the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan in 2024, the UN climate talks were rattled by what can only be described as a major PR disaster. The BBC, Reuters and The Guardian all carried headlines, attributed to leading climate policy experts, that the COPs were “no longer fit for purpose”.
The articles outlined a series of reforms called for in an open letter signed by 22 eminent scientists and politicians, including a former UN secretary-general and previous UN climate chief, with a further 150 lending their support. The headlines shook confidence in the COP process, just as governments were wrestling over a new climate finance goal.
The Club of Rome – which handled the media relations for the letter – hurried to say that its “constructive, supportive ideas” had been “misinterpreted”. Negotiators kept calm(ish) and carried on, in the end landing the finance goal after some high-stakes drama on the final day.
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Early speakers’ list suggests few powerful leaders will attend COP31
Just 77 heads of state or government are scheduled to address the COP31 climate summit in Antalya, a third less than the COP28 peak -
Africa wants adaptation finance on COP31 agenda, raising risk of a fight
The African Group wants dedicated space on tripling adaptation finance, the Green Climate Fund and trade, setting up a possible clash
To my surprise, when I went back this week to read the letter again, I could not find the offending line about the COPs not being fit for purpose. The Club of Rome has yet to respond to my query about its disappearance.
Whatever happened to the wording, that sentiment has been widely shared. COPs have ballooned in size while the importance of their outcomes seems to have diminished since the 2015 Paris Agreement (with the exception of the 2023 COP in Dubai where countries agreed to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems).
The same on the surface
Two years on from those painful headlines in Baku, has anything changed for the better? You might be forgiven for thinking not. Official decisions are still made by consensus rather than the majority voting some have called for to stop blockers.
Tens of thousands of officials, activists and business execs still scurry around the halls to an ever-growing list of side events, roundtables and dialogues, while deals still come down to rows, all-nighters and jargon-filled texts adopted to rounds of applause.
But it would not be true to say that COPs have completely failed to respond to the very real need to translate the words of the Paris Agreement into action in the outside world.
Global warming is projected to be around 1.3C lower this century than it would have been if the world had not committed to tackle the climate crisis under that accord. Developing countries have a valued space at COPs in which their voices have equal weight in decision-making, unlike in many other international fora. And most importantly, perhaps, there has been a subtle shift, tipping the balance away from negotiating towards doing.
Brazil branded last year’s summit in Belém as the “COP of Implementation”, corralling the sprawling Action Agenda into six axes. This was a bid to impose some structure on the mushrooming efforts between governments, UN agencies, cities, businesses and civil society to set targets and spur faster results on their pet issues, from methane emissions to health and adaptation in conflict zones. COP30 alone saw the launch of 120 “plans to accelerate solutions”.
COP30 roadmaps off the cuff
Meanwhile, as the formal negotiations drew to a close, it was clear that consensus decision-making was evolving into something a little more improvised.
With only around half of all countries on board with the idea of a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels, COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago announced his team would put one together over the coming year, along with another on how to meet a global goal to halt deforestation by 2030. Those roadmaps will be launched next week, presented and discussed at COP31, though it’s still unclear whether or how they’ll be incorporated into the formal negotiating agenda.
Some leading policy-makers don’t think that matters too much. Speaking to journalists before the Antalya summit, COP30 CEO Ana Toni and Dutch climate minister Stientje van Veldhoven said “coalitions of the willing” can move ahead without needing consensus from the COPs. This, they said, was evident this year at the first global conference on TAFF, co-chaired by van Veldhoven and attended by 60 countries.
“Consensus or no-consensus in the general COP doesn’t make a difference for the choices I have to make in my country to get my country to phase out fossil fuels,” said the Dutch minister. The Netherlands recently became one of the first to publish a national TAFF plan.
COP31 banks on flagship voluntary initiatives
This thinking has permeated the management and expected outcomes of this year’s COP too. Earlier this year, Türkiye, supported by international energy agencies, floated the idea of a voluntary goal to boost electrification to 35% of the world’s final energy consumption by 2035 – and this is now being touted as one of the main results to be expected from Antalya.
Türkiye is also championing a pledge on AI and climate, while co-host Australia is pushing to ease access to climate finance for least developed countries and small island states.
COP31 presidency announces AI pledge as UN climate chief says Big Tech ‘on thin ice’
None of these needs consensus. But with a political cover decision already in the works, as trailed by the COP presidents, they – and perhaps the fossil fuel roadmap – may find a home in the official text if language acceptable to most can be found, giving them them additional weight.
UNFCCC reform process in the shadows
Formal reform is underway too, if quietly. UN climate chief Simon Stiell is leading a review informed by ongoing consultations with a group of 15 well-respected climate policy experts, three of whom signed the open letter in 2024.
Among them is leading Swedish climate and sustainability scientist Johan Rockström who has strong ideas about how to make COPs function better, including a switch to majority voting. He told the same press briefing nothing stands in the way of this, because the rules of procedure for making decisions at COPs have never been formally agreed.
Still, to get away from the default setting of consensus would require agreement on a new system that may be impossible to achieve given the rise in bullying tactics by fossil fuel heavyweights.
Comment: The UN climate process was built for negotiation – now it must support implementation
The deliberations with the high-level policy gurus, as reflected in a summary of June’s session in Bonn, largely echo what’s already happening organically, calling for stronger partnerships and accountability both in and between the Action Agenda and negotiations. It doesn’t mention voting.
A general overview of the reform exercise says that “improving and optimizing the [UN climate] process over the medium to long term… will be critical to fostering trust, enhancing collaboration, and catalyzing increased ambition”.
In the short term, don’t hold your breath for anything concrete on reform at COP31 but watch for signs in what ends up dominating the headlines from Türkiye.
The post Editor’s Desk: COP reform is happening quietly, behind the headlines appeared first on Climate Home News.
Editor’s Desk: COP reform is happening quietly, behind the headlines
With the COP31 climate summit in Turkey looming, all eyes are on China to see what the country will push for in the negotiations.
At COP30 last year, China helped to secure a “dialogue” on climate-related “unilateral trade measures”, as well as a two-year “work programme” concerning climate finance.
The nation also championed south-south cooperation throughout the conference and co-led a summit on methane, alongside Brazil and the UK.
In a recent press conference, China’s environment vice-minister Li Gao noted the need to “uphold multilateralism” and send a “clear political signal” that the global community is united around climate action.