Wind turbine opponents do not like looking at wind turbines. But in the face of strong public support for non-polluting, locally-produced clean energy, that’s not an effective argument, so they make outrageous claims about health impacts and property values.
Study after study has proven claims about health impacts are false, and now a new study confirms nearby wind turbines have no impact on property values:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) analyzed more than 50,000 home sales near 67 wind facilities in 27 counties across nine U.S. states, yet was unable to uncover any impacts to nearby home property values.
“This is the second of two major studies we have conducted on this topic and in both studies [using two different datasets] we find no statistical evidence that operating wind turbines have had any measureable impact on home sales prices,” says Ben Hoen, the lead author of the new report. […]
“Although there have been claims of significant property value impacts near operating wind turbines that regularly surface in the press or in local communities, strong evidence to support those claims has failed to materialize in all of the major U.S. studies conducted thus far”, says Hoen. “Moreover, our findings comport with the large set of studies that have investigated other potentially similar disamenities, such as high voltage transmission lines, land fills, and noisy roads, which suggest that widespread impacts from wind turbines would be either relatively small or non-existent.”
Distant wind turbines are at most a minor inconvenience, something you might not pick as part of your new home in a perfect world, but one that wouldn’t deter you from buying a home in the real world.
Look at Falmouth, Fox’s favorite example of the WIND MENACE – home prices are up in the last year. And they’re flat in other places with wind turbines like Fairhaven, Hull, Kingston and Scituate, a far cry from the outrageous claims of home price decimation made by clean energy opponents.
Is he lying? Home prices may be up in East Boston, but do you want to live near Logan?
This has been studied time and time and time again. From 2012, here’s the most comprehensive study ever done in Massachusetts: http://www.mass.gov/dep/energy/wind/turbine_impact_study.pdf
That study, consistent with most other actual science on the topic, found that “Typically, at distances larger than 400 m, sound
pressure levels for modern wind turbines are less than 40 dB(A), which is below the level associated with annoyance in the epidemiological studies reviewed.”
And 1/4 mile is 402 meters. Meanwhile, 40 dB(A) – decibels – is about the same sound level as a stream or home refrigerator. Considerably less noisy than a normal conversation.
The decibel scale is logarithmic, so a jet engine (at least 100 decibels) at close range is about one hundred thousand times louder than a wind turbine from 1/4 mile away.
So, yeah, I’d say he was lying.
They wouldn’t sound like a jet engine if you were standing on top of the hub, never mind 1/4 mile away. Jet engines are 140 dbs. Wind turbines are 105 dbs (lawnmower level) at the unit, and as LL says, they drop off sharply.
Also, yes, home prices going up means people want to live near Logan. That is in fact exactly what that means.
…would much rather see wind turbines out my window than a lot of things I can think of (smokestacks, for example). Besides, in the case of Cape Wind aren’t they barely visible from shore?