There is no evidence that wind turbines affect residential property values negatively, according to a study carried out at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).
The study is titled “A Spatial Hedonic Analysis of the Effects of Wind Energy Facilities on Surrounding Property Values in the United States”.
Principal investigator, Ben Hoen and colleagues gathered and analyzed data on over 50,000 home sales across 9 US state in 27 counties near 67 wind facilities.
They did not uncover any impacts to nearby home property prices from wind turbines.
Hoen, a researcher in the Environmental Energy Technologies Division of Berkeley Lab, wrote:
“This is the second of two major studies we have conducted on this topic [the first was published in 2009, see below], and in both studies [using two different datasets] we find no statistical evidence that operating wind turbines have had any measurable impact on home sales prices.”
The team used a range of sophisticated techniques to determine whether other potential impacts were bearing down on home prices. They included data from well before the wind turbines had been built or their plans even announced, to after their completion.
This allowed them to control for any differences in home sale prices that existed beforehand across their sample, and any changes that took place as a result of the housing bubble.
No study has found wind turbines affect house prices
The authors describe this study as the most comprehensive one so far. It adds weight to the conclusions of the previous Berkeley Lab study, as well as several others, none of which found any significant impact on house prices from nearby operating wind turbines.
Hoen said:
“Although there have been claims of significant property value impacts near operating wind turbines that regularly surface in the press or in local communities, strong evidence to support those claims has failed to materialize in all of the major U.S. studies conducted thus far. Moreover, our findings comport with the large set of studies that have investigated other potentially similar disamenities, such as high voltage transmission lines, land fills, and noisy roads, which suggest that widespread impacts from wind turbines would be either relatively small or non-existent.”
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