You've probably heard the joke. Cows fart, methane goes up, the planet warms. Someone at a dinner party tells you one steak is "worth" a flight to New York, a popular comparison but not an actual scientific equivalence. These allegories have become shorthand for one of the biggest challenges in tackling climate change: methane.

Agriculture is responsible for a significant share of global methane emissions, much of it associated with livestock and the method in which agricultural waste is managed. But there is another significant source of methane further down the agriculture food chain, one that gets far less attention but produces 7-9% of global methane emissions³. This is the wastewater produced when food and agricultural products are processed.

When food and agricultural products are processed, for example milling palm oil, washing vegetables, slaughtering livestock, or refining sugar, the resulting wastewater is filled with high concentrations of organic matter (like sugars, proteins, fats, and starches). When this organic matter breaks down in the absence of oxygen, methane is produced, a biological process known as anaerobic decomposition⁴. In Indonesia alone, an estimated 90% of industrial food processors have no modern system for treating their wastewater or capturing the emissions it produces. Globally, this shortfall contributes to pollution equivalent to the impact of 320 million people, resulting in over 150 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent emissions each year based on methane’s 20‑year global warming potential¹.

That's the problem our investee Gree Energy was created to solve.

Gree Energy is a waste-to-energy company operating in Indonesia that treats industrial wastewater from food and agro-industrial processors and converts it into clean, usable energy. It captures the fugitive methane from organic waste and then turns it into biogas preventing methane from ever reaching the atmosphere. That biogas is then converted into electricity and supplied to local communities through power purchase agreements with municipalities⁵. Their model fills a crucial infrastructure gap in remote, underserved agricultural communities. It is a clear example of ‘for people and planet’: the same process that treats factory wastewater and cuts methane emissions also provides critical energy to communities historically underserved by unstable power grids.

The flagship example is the Hamparan project, built around a tapioca flour factory producing 40,000 tonnes of flour each year¹. The system removes 97% of the factory’s wastewater pollution and generates renewable energy that is distributed to 19 nearby villages¹. In 2025 Gree Energy developed the Riam Project, a biogas facility in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia, developed in partnership with a Bumitama Agri palm oil mill. By capturing methane from palm oil mill effluent, the site generates renewable electricity for 14 rural villages and is expected to avoid over 40,000 tonnes of annual carbon emissions².

In 2025, Gree Energy's projects removed over 5,000 tonnes of COD and nearly 2,000 tonnes of BOD from wastewater. This avoided roughly 18,700 tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions and 853 tonnes of methane. Additionally they supplied close to 4.7 million kWh of clean electricity to the grid⁵.

The work has been recognised externally too as Gree Energy won the Dubai International Best Practices Award in 2024 for addressing climate change and reducing pollution and was named a finalist in the Climate Action category of the Zayed Sustainability Prize from nearly 8,000 global applicants across 173. In 2025 Gree Energy also renewed its B Corp certification, reaffirming its standing as the only B Corp certified biogas solution provider in Asia⁵.

Gree Energy encapsulates Pillar 3 of our Water+ strategy, which focuses on wastewater circularity. It is a genuinely circular model, by taking a negative output such as methane generated from wastewater and decarbonises and depollutes it into positive outputs such as clean water and renewable power for rural communities in Indonesia. By turning industrial waste from a liability into an asset, the model has the potential to be replicated across food processing facilities worldwide, multiplying its positive impact by manifold. 

The food we produce may create methane, but what we do with it could help change the story, by turning a source of waste into energy, opportunity and a more circular food system.