No Evidence of Residential Property Impacts Near Wind Turbines According to Third Berkeley Lab Study
Massachusetts-focused study finds other factors, such as proximity to highways, beaches have price impact
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) along with University of Connecticut analyzed more than 122,000 home sales near 26 wind facilities (with over 1,500 within a mile of operating turbines) in densely populated Massachusetts, yet was unable to uncover any impacts to nearby home property values.
“This is the third of three major studies we have conducted on this topic [the first was published in 2009, and the second last August], and in all studies [using three different datasets] we find no statistical evidence that operating wind turbines have had any measureable impact on home sales prices,” says Ben Hoen, the co-author of the new report.
Hoen is a researcher in the Environmental Energy Technologies Division of Berkeley Lab.
One of the unique contributions of this most recent study is that impacts from turbines as well as a suite of other environmental amenities and disamenities were investigated. The study found strong evidence that highways, major roads, electricity transmission lines, open space and beaches impact property values, but no similar evidence was uncovered for turbines.
“When we find our model so accurately predicts impacts from other amenities and disamenities, we are considerably more confident of our findings for turbines”, says lead author Carol Atkinson-Palombo, Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography of the University of Connecticut.
The full study report is available here.