Wind Energy Projects and Property Values

While aesthetic impacts are subjective and may be addressed through local planning processes, a related concern in communities hosting wind projects is the impact to property values. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory conducted research regarding utility-scale wind energy development’s property value effects and produced the seminal work with the largest dataset, “The Impact of Wind Power Projects on Residential Property Values in the United States: A Multi-Site Hedonic Analysis.”

The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory authors collected data on almost 7,500 sales of single family homes situated within 10 miles of 24 existing wind facilities in nine U.S. states. The analysis finds that if property value impacts exist, they are too small and/or too infrequent to result in any widespread, statistically observable impact, although the possibility that individual homes or small numbers of homes have been or could be negatively impacted cannot be dismissed.

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