1 ERNEST ORLANDO LAWRENCE BERKELEY NATIONAL LABORATORY Environmental Energy Technologies Division 1 Cyclotron Rd., MS 90-4000, Berkeley, CA 94720 Response to Industrial Wind Action Group Critiques Ryan Wiser, Ben Hoen, Peter Cappers, Mark Thayer, Gautam Sethi December 2, 2009 Introduction On November 20, 2009, the Industrial Wind Action Group (IWAG) posted an editorial that, in part, lists a number of concerns about Berkeley Lab’s efforts to investigate the presence of residential property value impacts associated with U.S. wind power facilities. 1 That editorial follows from more-extensive review comments provided on September 11, 2009 by the Industrial Wind Action Group. 2 The more extensive comments were provided during the external review of the draft Berkeley Lab report, and were one of roughly 20 sets of external review comments received by stakeholders and experts at that time. All of these comments were considered during revisions to the draft report, culminating in the final analysis and report issued on December 2, 2009. Though the final Berkeley Lab study largely speaks for itself, this memorandum offers a brief response to the specific comments enumerated in the September 11 th review letter by the IWAG, some of which were also mentioned in the November 20 th letter. 3 Before responding to the specific comments offered in either critique, however, one important observation should be made: the Berkeley Lab report does not offer definitive proof that wind projects, under all circumstances, will never impact residential property values. Therefore, as the IWAG correctly claims, the results of this work should not be summarized as such. Rather, the Berkeley Lab work, as discussed extensively in the final report, finds no persuasive evidence of any consistent, measurable, and statistically significant effect given the sample of home sales transactions evaluated. As noted on several occasions in the report, although the analysis cannot dismiss the possibility that individual homes or small numbers of homes have been or could be negatively impacted, the extensive research finds that, if these impacts do exist, they are either too small and/or too infrequent to result in any widespread, statistically observable impact within the sample of nearly 7,500 home sales transactions evaluated. IWAG Comment: Regression analysis is not in accordance with the International Association of Assessing Officers' (IAAO) established methods The IWAG claims that the methods employed by the Berkeley Lab study are not in accordance with the established methods of the International Association of Assessing Officers (IAAO), potentially rendering the results of the study meaningless. 1 “False conclusions based on flawed real estate studies,” http://www.windaction.org/faqs/24176 . 2 “Hedonic analysis of the impact of wind power projects on residential property values in the United States,” http://www.windaction.org/documents/24178 . 3 The editorial posted on November 20 th makes a number of additional claims, suggesting that the authors of the study were predisposed to a preferred outcome, had no interest in conducting a legitimate study, and had no interest in releasing a final report. These claims are baseless, and are therefore not addressed here.