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Toyota hydrogen and electric cars ‘to be powered by cow poo’ from 2020 – and it’ll even be pollution free

COW poo could be the answer to pollution problems with Toyota using it to power hydrogen and electric cars.

Manure from dairy farms and methane gas will be captured to generate water, electricity and hydrogen by 2020.

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Cow manure will be converted in electricity, water and hydrogen by Toyota plantCredit: Getty - Contributor

Currently cows are a major pollutant, excreting huge amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.

But Toyota will put that waste to use at its Tri-Gen plant in California where it's testing a zero-emissions hydrogen truck that'll take on Tesla.

The cow waste plant is expected to generate 2.35 megawatts of electricity and 1.2 tons of hydrogen per day.

That'll be enough to power 1,500 cars and over 2,000 family homes.

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Toyota Mirai - on sale in the UK - will benefit from hydrogen productionCredit: Toyota

It will be the world's first renewable plant on such a scale.

Doug Murtha, Toyota North America’s group vice president for strategic planning, said: “For more than 20 years, Toyota has been leading the development of fuel cell technology, because we understand the tremendous potential (it has) to reduce emissions and improve society.

"Tri-Gen is a major step forward for sustainable mobility and a key accomplishment of our 2050 Environmental Challenge to achieve net zero CO2 emissions from our operations."

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The fuel will help power the Toyota Mirai in the US. The £60,000 hydrogen car is already on sale in the UK.

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But the UK currently only has handful of hydrogen pumps at the moment with Shell signed up to install more.

Hydrogen offers similar refuelling speeds to a regular petrol or diesel - plus the same sort of range per tank.

At the moment the technology is much more expensive but some experts believe it could be the long term answer to meet pollution targets.

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