To See Or Not To See
Having a wind turbine in your viewshed has a negligible impact on home values.
Don Quixote and NIMBYs have spent significant energy fighting windmills (technically wind turbines in the case of the energy-producing kind). This resistance continues to be a major bummer for advocates of the fastest growing (and may I add clean, low cost and ample) renewable energy in the United States. There are a number of arguments put forward against wind turbines. According to critics, they are noisy, cause a visual flicker for some homes during certain times of the day, and kill birds. I am not even going to go after the ridiculous whale thing. One additional argument that has been put forward is that they are just ugly things that destroy our visual enjoyment of this land. These are all interesting assertions, but some of these are testable! And so we did.
In a paper out this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Wei Guo, Leonie Wenz and I test whether housing values for homes that can see a wind turbine, versus homes nearby that can’t because of an obstruction in the landscape (think a hill) fetch lower sales prices when sold. What is cool about this exercise is that we did this for all wind turbines in the US using transactions for more than 300 million homes.
The intuition is simple. Meredith and David live next door to each other. In identical homes. The only difference is that out her living room window, Meredith can see a 500 foot tall wind turbine and David cannot because a hill is in the way. Both sell their home at identical times. The difference in sales price is hence the effect of seeing the wind turbine (labor economists, control your urges to tell me what other things the hill might be doing). We do this exercise for all homes within 10 kilometers of a wind turbine that were sold between 1990 and before COVID hit.
The figure below shows you what we did for each wind turbine. When you think about how many wind turbines there are in the U.S., you can imagine that this nearly melted a few computers. The blue cube is a wind turbine. The orange blobs are homes that can see the wind turbine. The pink blobs are homes that can’t. Now we compare sales prices for orange and pink blobs. 
What do we find, you ask?
- The average home in the sample that has a wind turbine in its viewshed sold for 1.2% less than an identical home that does not. Is this a lot? It’s not peanuts. We estimate about 25 billion dollars over the three decades we are looking at. But compared to the multi-trillion dollar value of housing assets, this is rounding error.
- Homes closer to wind turbines have larger impacts. The visual disamenity (think mental/emotional response to finding something ugly) reduces property values by up to 8% within a neighborhood range of 1.5 km (0.9 miles). However, the number of properties within this distance is small. Nationally, there are fewer than 250,000 transactions within 1.5 km of the nearest wind turbine, as opposed to approximately 8.5 million transactions within 10 km. As we move further away from a turbine, the effect is statistically indistinguishable from zero 8 km (5 miles) away from the nearest wind turbine. To put this in perspective, if one stretched out an average-sized arm and held up an aspirin tablet, this would equate the perceived size of an average wind turbine five miles away. Were the same wind turbine one mile away, it would appear to be roughly the size of a golf ball. (Max is very proud of figuring this out).
- We further investigate what drives the visual disamenity effect. We find that the negative impact of wind turbines on property values is primarily observed among urban properties, with negative but noisy effects in rural areas. Our analysis based on geographical altitude suggests that the negative impact of wind turbine visibility is particularly pronounced in non mountainous regions. We also observe a strong correlation between local political leanings and disamenity effects, with right-leaning communities experiencing a significantly greater impact compared to left-leaning areas. Last, the visual disamenity is more accentuated in high-income locales as opposed to low-income areas. So rich, conservative urban flat areas dislike wind turbines the most.
- Most importantly, thank you referee 3, we found that the negative impact of seeing a wind turbine disappears over time. There is a much bigger effect on nearby housing values right after a wind turbine is constructed than a few years later. But most importantly, if we look at whether the estimated effect changes over time, we find- no matter how we slice it – that wind turbines installed in the past decade had a much smaller effect , so much smaller that it is indistinguishable from zero in recent years. WOW. ZA. ZOOEY. What this implies is that we probably get used to seeing wind turbines. I bet you that the first transmission tower was hated as much as the first wind turbine. But frankly, I do not even notice transmission infrastructure anymore. I got used to it!
So in summary, we show that wind turbines do not seem to negatively affect housing values (on average) any more. While “nothing to see here” is usually a deadly finding for an academic, this is an important zero, as it strengthens the positive case for building more of these sources of clean electricity. But what about the bad news Max? I do not come here for good news. OK, I’ll indulge. You know what kills birds? CATS! According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service, land-based wind turbines kill about 250,000 birds per year. Cats: 2.4 billion. So NIMBY Person, put down the protest sign, recall your lawyer and lock up your cat. We’ll all be better off for it.
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Suggested citation: Auffhammer, Maximilian. “To See Or Not To See” Energy Institute Blog, March 25, 2024, https://energyathaas.wordpress.com/2024/03/25/to-see-or-not-to-see/
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Maximilian Auffhammer View All
Maximilian Auffhammer is the George Pardee Professor of International Sustainable Development at the University of California Berkeley. His fields of expertise are environmental and energy economics, with a specific focus on the impacts and regulation of climate change and air pollution.
Energy Institute Blog 
” Land-based wind turbines kill about 250,000 birds per year. Cats: 2.4 billion.” But Eagals, hawks and other raptors are not usually killed by Puss and Boots. Windmills on the Pacific Flyway that are not of the newer slower moving type are killers. The slower propeller or vertical “eggbeater” types work just as well and do not kill very many birds. The Focused thermal solar arrays kill more birds as they try to fly through the “Killer Sun Beem.” You want to produce clean, environmentally sound energy, photo Voltaic Rooftop Solar is the way to go.
Max, please…not the “cats” argument again.
Cats eat sparrows and finches. There are ~200 million of them in the U.S. Each year, pairs produce 2-4 broods of 6-8 eggs.
Wind turbines kill >300,000 soaring and migrating birds each year, a number that has been steadily growing.
Among the soaring birds are raptors: hawks, eagles, falcons, kites, ospreys, vultures, and condors. Many are endangered, some critically (The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has procured two “take” permits for California Condors at its Pine Tree Wind Farm, should two of the 355 remaining individuals happen to be soaring at the wrong place and time). Pairs produce 1 brood each year, of 1-2 eggs each. Not coincidentally, soaring birds inhabit the same areas where wind farms are located. They depend on uninterrupted, steady wind to survive.
Among U.S. migrating birds are geese, ducks, cranes, flamingos, swans, plovers, terns, and warblers. Pairs produce 1 brood each year of 2-8 eggs. They migrate north and south along the Atlantic, Mississippi, Central, and Pacific Flyways. Not coincidentally, each are considered prime locations for wind farms.
One can only imagine the outcry if American nuclear plants killed 3,000 hawks or falcons each year, much less 300,000. But among migrating and soaring birds, there’s no evidence they’ve ever killed one.
Thank you. We need clean, eco-friendly power not killers in our midst.
I am a wind guy going back 20 years. Recently passing through a fairly heavily populated valley in TX where the bright red aircraft lights on 200+(?) were synchronously blinking every 30 seconds or less. It was appallingly offensive – can’t figure out what the developers were thinking, unless they weren’t and don’t live there.
It is always challenging to hear our “bright researchers” (often from cities where these projects are never built) opine how dumb the impacted rural people are for not being enthusiastic about their wonderful ideas.
This “report” has the same major flaw that all other reports have, that are published by wind turbine advocates. It dilutes the property devaluation effect by throwing in a huge number of properties that no one EVER claimed would be effected. 1 Mile is the scientifically recommended setback, so the report should exclusively look at homes within one mile. To include all proerties within FIVE miles is absurd.
I think the point is that there are very few residential properties within 1 mile of a wind turbine.
The solution is quite obvious given the small number of properties affected–project developers pay these households within this small range compensation for lost property value.
This “report” has the same major flaw that all other reports have, that are published by wind turbine advocates. It dilutes the property devaluation effect by throwing in a huge number of properties that no one EVER claimed would be effected. 1 Mile is the scientifically recommended setback, so the report should exclusively look at homes within one mile. To include all proerties within FIVE miles is absurd.
At one point you note that 1.2% of the cost of the house is not so trivial, yet you trivialize 2.9% of the houses within 1.5km.
You don’t mention the percentage of “rich, conservative urban flat areas” are affected.
Cats don’t kill birds of prey and that’s most of the 250,000.