One of the criticisms of wind farms is that being near them lowers property values, but research from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab finds no statistical evidence of that.
Homeowners often resist wind farm development because of this fear, especially in highly populated states in the Northeast, mid-Atlantic and upper Midwest.
"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 US studies conducted thus far", says Ben Hoen, lead author of the report. "Moreover, our findings comport with the large set of studies that have investigated other potentially similar disamenities, such as high voltage transmission lines, landfills, and noisy roads, which suggest that widespread impacts from wind turbines would be either relatively small or non-existent."
Lawrence Berkeley analyzed more than 50,000 home sales near 67 wind farms in nine states. All the homes were within 10 miles of wind turbines and about 1,100 were within one mile. They studied the impact on home values during all phases: immediately after a wind farm was announced; during the time leading up to its installation; and after construction.
They found no statistical evidence that wind turbines cause home values to decline.
Lawrence Berkeley previously studied this issue in 2009 and came to the same conclusions, but this study is the most comprehensive analysis of the issue to date. Its earlier research looked at only 7,500 home sales within 10 miles of 24 existing wind farms.
Researchers acknowledge there may be cases when an individual home price might fall because of its proximity to a wind farm, but they are statistically rare. Although homes within a half mile of turbines haven’t been specifically studied, setback requirements make those cases rare.
Download the report, "A Spatial Hedonic Analysis of the Effects of Wind Energy Facilities on Surrounding Property Values in the United States":
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I guess this Mr.Hoen must be pretty smart, since he can twist his statistics far enough to turn a 28% lower value within 1 mile of turbines into a finding of no statistical evidence of value loss. The report shows the bare facts on Table 7, and the numbers are in stark contrast to this man’s conclusions. He must be a PR person because no scientist could twist the facts so far.