<p>The transition to a greener economy requires firms to develop specific organizational capabilities and skills. This involves transforming production processes and restructuring human resources. However, the lack of these skills and capabilities could lead to a bottleneck problem (difficult to overcome) for organizations. Our purpose is to focus on the needs of European SMEs to transit into greener activities. We first identify the drivers behind firms' capability shortages and then, we investigate how this shortage impacts their efforts to become greener and the strategies, both internal and external, to address these skills shortages. Using data from more than 13,000 companies from Flash Eurobarometer Survey 537, our results show that firms face significant difficulties in finding the appropriate skills required. This is a complex issue, primarily affecting those at vocational education levels and driven by a variety of factors. The availability of specific technical skills plays a crucial role within SMEs in mitigating their negative impacts on the environment.</p>