29 August 2013 — A study from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has found no evidence of wind turbines affecting property prices.
Analysing more than 50,000 home sales near 67 wind farms across nine US states, it found no evidence of impacts to sale price from the turbines.
Berkeley Lab said the study, A Spatial Hedonic Analysis of the Effects of Wind Energy Facilities on Surrounding Property Values in the United States, was the most comprehensive to date, using a number of sophisticated techniques to control for other potential impacts on house price, including collecting data from before the wind facilities’ development announcement to post-construction and operation.
“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 materialise in all of the major US studies conducted thus far”, said report lead author Ben Hoen.
“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.”