Study: Wind power projects don’t impact property values

Research at DOE's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory finds no widespread impact of wind power projects on surrounding residential property values.

By Source: Dept. of Energy December 3, 2009

The Dept. of Energy’s (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has released a technical analysis of wind energy facilities’ impacts on the property values of nearby residences. The research, funded by DOE’s Wind and Hydropower Technologies Program, is the most comprehensive and data-rich analysis on the subject to date.

Using a combination of different analytic approaches, the investigation finds no evidence that prices of homes surrounding wind facilities are consistently, measurably, and significantly affected by either the view of wind facilities or the distance of the home to those facilities. Though the analysis cannot dismiss the possibility that individual homes or small numbers of homes have been or could be negatively impacted, it finds that if these impacts do exist, their frequency is too small to result in any widespread, statistically observable impact.

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