What connection do solar farms have on property values? This is what a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences hopes to address as a team of researchers led by the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) investigated the monetary impact of large-scale solar farms, specifically regarding property value. This study has the potential to help researchers, climate scientists, legislators, and the public better understand the non-environmental impacts of renewable energy and the steps that can be taken to mitigate them.
“As the U.S. scales up renewable energy, solar installations are increasingly being sited near homes and on farmland, and this often leads to pushback from residents worried about aesthetics or property value loss,” said Chenyang Hu, who is a PhD student in the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at Virginia Tech and lead author of the study. “Until now, much of this discussion has been based on anecdotal evidence.”
For the study, the researchers analyzed data from approximately 8.8 million property sales located near approximately 3,700 solar farms beginning 15 years before each solar farm was built until 2020. The goal was to ascertain how the solar farms impacts property values over time, specifically regarding residential and land values. This is due to a “stigma” regarding solar farms and property values that ahs existed since the 1970s. In the end, the researchers found an inverse relationship between residential homes and land values as the former decreases while the latter increases.
“In this study, we provided a very general quantification of the property value impacts, and we anticipate more similar works in specific contexts,” said Dr. Zhenshan Chen, who is an assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at Virginia Tech and a co-author on the study. “Ideally, policymakers, developers, and local communities could absorb such information and organize meaningful discussions on how such problems could be addressed.”
What new connections between solar farms and property values will researchers make in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!
Sources: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, EurekAlert!