The unfulfilled solar promise of India and Germany

Mehreen Amin is in her fourth semester at Government Degree College for Women in Zakura, Srinagar. Ms. Amin recently completed an intensive solar engineering program through a Kashmir-based training institute registered with the Skill Council for Green Jobs (SCGJ). When the institute initially mobilized students in her community, she felt an instinctive urge to enroll.

“Back then, I wasn’t thinking about the career benefits or the future of solar energy; my only interest was the practical desire to learn how to install panels,” recalls Ms. Amin. “But now I realize that we will all need these skills in the future. I want to know exactly how to handle and operate this device.”

Ms. Amin’s training is part of the training of thousands of students and professionals to become “Suryamitras” or Certified Solar Photovoltaic (PV) Technicians. It is a three-month program of the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, implemented by the National Institute of Solar Energy, to promote job creation in the Indian solar industry.

In 2023, some of the Suryamitras were also considered as potential candidates to work in the German solar industry.

Within a month of former German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s visit to India in February 2023, the Bundesverband Solarwirtschaft (BSW) or the German Solar Industry Association and the SCGJ signed a Memorandum of Understanding to promote the migration of skilled workers in the solar sector between India and Germany.

BSW is a trade organization representing more than 1,000 companies in the solar energy and battery storage industry in Germany. SCGJ is a non-profit, autonomous, industry-led organization affiliated to the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship.

According to the MoU, the promise was to place at least 20 Indian Suryamitra electricians in the German solar sector. Another goal was to support the exchange of skilled workers, which would help address and accelerate the migration of skilled workers in solar areas between the two countries. According to conservative estimates, Germany faces a shortage of more than 1,00,000 workers in the solar sector.

Three years after the MoU was signed, not a single Indian Suryamitra has immigrated to Germany.

This is not the first time that an official Indo-German agreement promising the transfer of skilled labor has failed to materialise. Two years earlier, the states of Maharashtra and the German state of Baden-Württemberg signed a skilled labor transfer agreement that promised to send 10,000 skilled workers in 34 fields from the Indian state to Germany. By December 2025, reports confirmed that not a single professional had migrated under the agreement.

Big promises

The BSW-Solar and SCGJ agreement repeats the pattern of not a single skilled professional migrating from India to Germany. It was during Chancellor Scholz’s visit to India in 2023 that Germany raised the professional visa limit for Indian professionals from 20,000 to 90,000.

According to a 2025 study by the German Economic Institute (IW), there are about 32,800 Indian professionals working in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) fields, a nine-fold increase since 2012.

A third of India’s full-time workers aged 25 to 44 are employed in the STEM sector. But the picture is not so rosy for non-STEM sectors, especially in areas where professional training is a must – such as the solar industry.

“We understand that the primary objective of this initiative was to support domestic workforce training and skills development in India to meet the needs of its emerging local market, rather than facilitating international internships,” noted David Wedepohl, Executive Director of International Affairs at BSW Solar and also a signatory to the MoU.

According to BSW Solar, they were not operationally involved in the training program.

A signatory from SCGJ, Arpit Sharma, noted that the Suryamitras were already trained under the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy’s program and that the idea behind the partnership was to improve their skills in German technical standards and provide courses in German.

“Unfortunately, no candidates were trained during the tenure and no funds were provided to the SCGJ for any task,” Mr. Sharma noted.

According to Mr. Wedepohl, across the solar energy value chain, there is particular demand for skilled workers in the field of building electrical systems such as DC assembly, AC installation, PV planning and construction management for the PV sector.

According to a 2024 study by the Bertelsmann Foundation, only 18% of companies were actively recruiting workers from abroad, even though 70% faced a labor shortage.

This is due to language and bureaucratic barriers, such as the recognition of professional qualifications. In professional fields, German companies are strict about practical knowledge in the workplace.

According to Mr. Wedepohl, “The aim was to identify the already trained Suryamitras that had been supported by the National Solar Energy Institute and, if necessary, upgrade them to German standards.”

Jana Fingerhut, Senior Project Manager (Sustainable Social Market Economy) at the Bertelsmann Foundation, notes that German companies are strict about the accreditation of certain professions in addition to language skills.

“The accreditation process can cause delays. The government also restricts language and integration courses, which makes it even more difficult for many qualified people to enter the German labor market. We hope that this will change in the future,” noted Ms. Fingerhut.

Mr. Sharma noted that the list of 30 Suryamitras was shared with BSW Solar. “Candidates could not go through the upskilling program because German migration laws had changed,” Mr Sharma said.

Talking to various other students like Ms. Amin also revealed that many interns are not enrolling with the goal of building a career in the solar sector. Some interns said they applied for a scholarship associated with the program, while others did so while pursuing another profession.

It found that institutes are given enrollment targets but receive little guidance on how to identify or recruit candidates who are genuinely interested in green sector jobs. As a result, the focus often shifts from attracting motivated interns to simply filling positions.

Structural barriers

One thing both sides agree on is changes to the migration frameworks on the German side, which further complicate the situation.

“When the partnership was originally formed, the labor shortage and market conditions in Germany were different from today. The German market has grown by around 100% between 2022 and 2023. The collaboration provided a valuable opportunity to better understand the Indian solar sector and explore whether labor mobility between the two countries could be feasible in the future,” said Mr. Wedepohl.

According to a 2026 report by the Bertelsmann Foundation, the number of people employed in Germany’s renewable energy sector will reach a record 4,36,000 in 2025, an increase of less than 4% from 2023. The report states that the current federal government’s energy policy changes could threaten thousands of jobs in the sector.

“The previous government placed a strong emphasis on the expansion of renewable energy and delivered this through ambitious new expansion targets and faster approval processes for renewable energy facilities. There appears to be a policy shift under the current federal government that could slow down the expansion of renewable energy. However, this is not yet 100% certain as four energy sector bills are currently in the pipeline. However, the original bills could lead to lower investment in renewables and suggest that they could lead to lower investments in renewable energy sources, Mrs. Fingerhut.

In March 2026, German Economy Minister Katherine Reiche suspended state subsidies for rooftop solar installations up to 25 kW, citing a drop in photovoltaic prices.

“This reduction would mean that fewer people would have the incentive to install solar panels, which could have a negative impact on investment and, in turn, employment in the solar industry,” Ms. Fingerhut noted.

Currently, the BSW and SCGJ partnership focuses on ongoing discussions on developing the skills of manufacturing and industry workers across the solar value chain.

(This article is part of the Indo-German climate and energy journalism program organized by Clean Energy Wire, supported by Heinrich Böll Stiftung)