A common tactic of the anti-renewable crowd is to spread rumors that renewable energy will depress home values. Real world experience says, “Not so.”
New study says solar enhances home values.
A multi-institutional research team of scientists led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkley Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), in partnership with Sandia National Laboratories, universities, and appraisers found that home buyers consistently have been willing to pay more for homes with host-owned solar photovoltaic (PV) energy systems —averaging about $4 per watt of PV installed—across various states, housing and PV markets, and home types. This equates to a premium of about $15,000 for a typical PV system. The team analyzed almost 22,000 sales of homes, almost 4,000 of which contained PV systems in eight states from 1999 to 2013—producing the most authoritative estimates to date of price premiums for U.S. homes with PV systems.
“Previous studies on PV home premiums have been limited in size and scope,” says Ben Hoen, the lead author of the new report. “We more than doubled the number of PV home sales analyzed, examined a number of states outside of California, and captured the market during the recent housing boom, bust, and recovery.”
Wind energy, in particular, has had to contend with the home-value claim – but with more and more turbines spinning in communities across the country, home values continue to hold up.
This last worry – about property value loss — appears unfounded, according to a study released (January 2014) by researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and the University of Connecticut. After analyzing more than 122,000 home sales in urban areas near 26 wind farms in Massachusetts, the researchers concluded that there was no statistical evidence that wind farms impact the value of nearby urban properties.
Interestingly, researchers found that in some cases, the announcement of a new wind farm may have contributed to a drop in some home prices. But after construction was completed, home prices appeared to be unaffected, according to the study.
That’s good news for the wind industry.
U.S. wind power capacity is likely to grow by 9% in 2014 to about 66,000 megawatts, and jump an additional 15% to 75,000 megawatts by the end of 2015, according to a Tuesday forecast by the U.S. Department of Energy.
Wind farms aside, the Lawrence Berkeley study found that Massachusetts home prices did appear to suffer if a property was near a landfill, power transmission line, highway or prison. Conversely, home values tended to be higher for properties near a beach or park, according to one of the study’s less-surprising findings.
(Wind Energy Consultant Larry) Flowers also points to the evidence that wind power development has little, if any, effect on property values.
“I remember, 10 years ago, in Ludington, Mich., there was a proposal for a wind farm, and there were fears about its effect on local property values,” he recalled. “We said there would be no significant impact, but we had no data, only our own experience.
“But now there’s data from all around the nation and the world,” he said. “With 70,000 megawatts of wind power installed in the U.S., we have a lot of data. Researchers looked at housing transactions, using sophisticated measures to exclude factors that muddle the findings—changing economies, demographics, industrial versus rural areas. The same answer always comes out: There is no significant effect on property values. But it’s hard to tell people who haven’t experienced it themselves.”
Hey, Peter—thanks for the citation!
Jim
RE my earlier comment on the block. It was squashed southward yesterday, blessedly letting in some more rain for Northern California. The south is still not getting very much in the way of moisture, though. Big storm on the way at the four day forecast horizon. Looks like another northern event. Will have to watch the evolution.