Go for solar farms where we grow for gas

Manhattan: Americans are required to run their cars partly on corn — ethanol, that is. It makes up 10% of what goes in your gas tank, and a bill in Congress known as E15 would increase that to 15%. The bill is now before the Senate and should be voted down.

While EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin touts 15% ethanol as a way to help lower prices at the pump, we’ll pay in other ways. Even more of our tax dollars will underwrite the already heavy subsidies for ethanol production. Our health will be a trade-off, as 15% ethanol in summer will result in more toxic ozone at ground level, where it causes wheezing, coughing and asthma attacks.

With electricity powering more cars, heating more homes and in demand by more power-hungry data centers, what we really need is more electricity, not more ethanol. As it is, corn grown for ethanol occupies an astounding 30 million acres of American farmland. What if farmers replaced even a fraction of those acres with solar arrays? Researchers have found that only one acre of utility-scale solar generates the energy of 31 acres of corn-ethanol crops. Putting solar facilities on just 3.2% of land currently used for corn-ethanol would more than triple the U.S. production of utility-scale solar energy.

Forest Hills: Re “Mamdani and Menin horse ban bill is an unworkable mess” (editorial, Oct. 16): What about the horses and their future? Think STEM — science, technology, engineering and mares. Teach the horses to code.

Yonkers: Greed is encouraging hard-working bodega owners to seek........

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