Wind Turbine Impact on Property Value
As large, utility-operated wind farms continue to sprout up around the country to offset the nation’s dependence on fossil fuels, some landowners have become concerned over what impact such “industrial” sites will have on the value of their property and homes.
Other People Are Reading
-
Quality of Life
-
Home sales prices are very sensitive to the overall quality of the scenic view from a property. Studies investigating residential home sale prices near conventional power plants, high voltage transmission lines, and roads have found some negative property value impacts. Such intrusions on their quality-of-life--reflecting a “Not in My Backyard” sensibility--have sparked numerous lawsuits over the years from angry homeowners.
Wind Farm Footprint
-
Utility-scale wind turbines stand from 300 to 400 feet high. In open, flat terrain, a utility-scale wind farm requires about 60 acres per megawatt of installed capacity. However, only 5 percent (3 acres) or less of this area is actually occupied by turbines, access roads and other equipment--95 percent remains free for other compatible uses such as farming or ranching, according to the American Wind Energy Association.
-
Home Sales
-
A three-year study by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory concluded in December 2009 that “neither the view of wind energy facilities nor the distance of the home to those facilities was found to have any consistent, measurable, and significant effect on the selling prices of nearby homes. No matter how we looked at the data, the same result kept coming back--no evidence of widespread impacts.” The home sales used in the study occurred between 1996 and 2007, spanning the period prior to the announcement of each wind energy facility to well after its construction and full-scale operation.
Property Value
-
The Berkeley Lab researchers collected data on homes situated within 10 miles of 24 existing wind facilities in nine different states, with the closest home only 800 feet from a wind farm. Using eight different hedonic pricing models--a statistical analysis method used to estimate the impact of house characteristics on sales prices--none of the models uncovered evidence of the existence of any widespread negative property value effects.
On the Farm
-
In states like California, Minnesota and Texas, rural landowners and farmers are receiving supplementary income through leasing and royalty arrangements with wind power developers. Farmers and ranchers have discovered that crops can grow and cattle can graze among the huge wind turbine towers and they can lease their lands to wind developers for either a set rental per turbine or for a small percentage of gross annual revenue from the project. The U.S. Government Accountability Office reported in 2004 that a farmer who leases land to a wind project developer can generally expect to obtain royalties of $3,000 to $5,000 per turbine per year in lease payments.
-
References
Resources
- Photo Credit wind turbine image by MAXFX from Fotolia.com
