# The visual effect of wind turbines on property values is small and diminishing in space and time

## TL;DR

Wind turbines slightly lower nearby home values, but the effect fades with distance and time.

## Contribution

First US-wide assessment of wind turbine visibility's impact on property values using 23 years of data.

## Key findings

- Wind turbine visibility reduces home values by 1% within viewshed.
- Effect diminishes with distance and time, becoming negligible after 20 years.
- Impact is stronger for homes closer to more turbines.

## Abstract

A substantial expansion of renewable energy generation is necessary for decarbonizing the U.S. economy. Wind power is the fastest-growing renewable source of electricity in the United States. It has been argued that wind turbines are a visual disamenity. We statistically estimate the impact of having at least one wind turbine within sight on home values, using data from more than 300 million home sales and 60,000 wind turbines in the United States from 1997 to 2020. We find robust evidence of a 1% drop of home values within a wind turbine’s viewshed. The effect is larger for homes closer to more wind turbines, but is no longer detectable by the end of the 20-y period covered by our data.

Renewable power generation is the key to decarbonizing the electricity system. Wind power is the fastest-growing renewable source of electricity in the United States. However, expanding wind capacity often faces local opposition, partly due to a perceived visual disamenity from large wind turbines. Here, we provide a US-wide assessment of the externality costs of wind power generation through the visibility impact on property values. To this end, we create a database on wind turbine visibility, combining information on the site and height of each utility-scale turbine having fed power into the U.S. grid, with a high-resolution elevation map to account for the underlying topography of the landscape. Building on hedonic valuation theory, we statistically estimate the impact of wind turbine visibility on home values, informed by data from the majority of home sales in the United States since 1997. We find that on average, wind turbine visibility negatively affects home values in an economically and statistically significant way in close proximity (<5 miles/8 km). However, the effect diminishes over time and in distance and is indistinguishable from zero for larger distances and toward the end of our sample.