- Bishop Hill blog

The Mail on Sunday is reporting the results of a study at LSE, which found that wind turbines adversely affect house prices in their immediate vicinity.

The study by the London School of Economics (LSE) – which looked at more than a million sales of properties close to wind farm sites over a 12-year period – found that values of homes within 1.2 miles of large wind farms were being slashed by about 11 per cent.

This is not exactly a surprise, but it's nevertheless good to have an academic study that supports the case that windfarms are a blight. And what a contrast to shale gas developments, with studies having found that their effect on house prices are almost entirely positive, with the possible exception of those households that utiilise ground water rather than mains supplies (which in the UK is very few people indeed).

Using data from New York and Pennsylvania and an array of empirical techniques to control for confounding factors, we recover hedonic estimates of property value impacts from shale gas development that vary with geographic scale and water source. Results indicate large negative impacts on nearby groundwater-dependent homes, while piped water-dependent homes are positively impacted by proximity (although by a smaller amount), suggesting an impact of lease payments. At a broader geographic scale, we find evidence that new wellbores can increase property values, but these effects diminish over time. Undrilled permits, conversely, may cause property values to decrease.