8 wind-energy questions you’ve probably asked, answered

It’s been a rough year for wind in the U.S., as the Trump administration has been kneecapping wind farms left and right. They’ve scuttled nine already-permitted offshore projects, announced that solar and wind projects on federal lands and waters will be subject to extra scrutiny, pulled back on subsidies, and launched an investigation into imported turbines. Add a steady stream of very public and very incorrect statements about the alternative energy, and it’s easy to understand how public discourse is shifting. 

So let’s clear some things up: Building out more wind power—both offshore and onshore—is part of every single scenario for reaching net-zero emissions in the U.S. And turbines are among the safest and least-emitting energy sources available. 

This message is still resonating, but not quite as clearly as it once did. While nearly seven out of ten Americans want more offshore wind farms, public support has been slipping a bit. According to data from the Pew Research Center, 68% of Americans favor adding more wind power to the grid, which is a 15% dip in favorability since 2020. 

Skepticism about wind has become increasingly mainstream, according to research by Kevin Winter, a social psychologist at Germany’s University of Hohenheim who studies peoples’ attitudes and behaviors towards the environment. In fact, if a person buys into one misleading statement, they’re more likely to jibe with other facets of anti-wind rhetoric. “If they believe that wind farms have negative impacts on their health, they would also be more likely to believe that the wind farms are inefficient or that the government [is hiding] some negative information about these wind farms,” he says.

That’s not to say that wind power is perfectly benign—nothing is. “There are also negative aspects of wind farms that can be real in specific situations,” Winter says, “And we have to really look at the concrete situations: Do the advantages outweigh the disadvantages?” Trouble starts to bubble up when campaigns—often funded by fossil-fuel interests—use kernels of truth about wind power’s imperfections to spin up anti-wind sentiment.  

So, we dug into some of the most-common questions about wind farms—from their impact on wildlife and property values to how their high initial costs shake out in your utility bills. We hope you find it helpful when you’re trying to figure out which wind claims are true and which ones are just, well, hot air. 

If you want to dive in even further, this comprehensive guide on energy-transition myths from by the Sabin Center for Climate Law at Columbia University is jammed with even more data. It’s one of our go-tos for getting centered on the details that combat misinformation.

1. Are wind turbines dangerous for birds and other wildlife? 

We’ll take this one in two parts: one in the air and one in the sea. Let’s start with the birds. Collisions with turbines do kill some birds, but the numbers are small: estimates range from 4 to 18 per turbine per year, which means the 73,000-ish turbines currently in operation in the U.S. are responsible for between 292,000 and 1.3 million high-flying fatalities every trip around the sun. That might sound like a lot, but it’s important to remember that there are billions of birds in the U.S. and that other threats are much more deadly. Collisions with buildings cause up to 599 million deaths, and run-ins with cats up to 2.4 billion deaths. Even cars kill more birds than turbines.

Some studies even show that transitioning to renewable energy sources—including wind turbines—will ultimately prove beneficial to all things feathered. A recent study in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution found that fossil-fueled heat has spurred a 38% decrease in tropical bird populations. And a comprehensive analysis from the Cornell University Laboratory Of Ornithology partly attributes steadily declining bird populations to human-caused warming, though it doesn’t cite a specific number. 

All that said, while bird deaths might not be a reason to nix spinning blades, it doesn’t mean ornithologists and entrepreneurs aren’t trying to help these two titans of the skies coexist. They’re exploring simple tactics like picking colors that help birds better see the spinners to advanced bird-detection tech to shut down the blades when a feathery friend gets too close for comfort. Also worth noting: The National Audubon Society is pro-turbine, and works with governments and developers to push for regulations and practices to make them safer.

By sea? Despite what popular talking points might claim, there’s currently no scientific evidence that offshore wind turbines have caused any whale deaths. The primary threats to marine mammals are oil spills, pollution, and shipping. 

2. Are wind turbines dangerous for people? 

Spurious claims have linked wind turbine noise to epilepsy, nausea, sleeplessness, headaches, and even cancer. There’s no scientific evidence to support any of those assertions. Sleeplessness, one study found, is better explained by an individual’s annoyance with the turbine’s presence than its noise. The “shadow flicker” of spinning blades is at a different frequency than one know to trigger seizures. And The American Cancer Society told The New York Times that there’s nothing credible to imply that turbine noise is in any way carcinogenic. Concerned about electromagnetic fields (EMFs)? Don’t be: EMF radiation from turbines is lower than what comes off of most household appliances.  

On the other hand, there’s ample evidence that burning fossil fuels is dangerous for health. A map developed by Climate Trace, a collaborative group of academics and analysts, shows that pollution from burning fossil fuels threatens the wellbeing of 1.6 billion people. Fossil-fueled air pollution has been readily linked to heart disease, respiratory illness, and lung cancer. Oil and gas production contributes to 90,000 premature deaths in the U.S. every year, according to a study from University College London and the Stockholm Environment Institute.

3. Do wind farms affect property values?

Offshore wind projects have had no lasting effect on coastal home prices in the U.S. or in Europe. And they won’t scare off many tourists in beachfront communities, either: Some data indicates that visitors might be deterred by turbines in their sightlines, but that’s really only true if the blades are spinning less than eight miles offshore—a threshold nearly every project in the U.S. surpasses. In fact, installations, like one off Rhode Island, actually attract so-called turbine tourism.

As for terrestrial wind farms? A couple analyses have found that values take a dip of a few percentage points early on—as in when the turbines are going up—but also tend to recover within a few years. A new study from The London School of Economics found that home values in communities with wind farms consistently go up about 3% once the blades start spinning. The reason: The installations also increase local tax revenue, which in turn gets invested in public services like public schools. That in turn boosts property values. 

4. Is wind energy expensive? 

Initially, the multi-million-dollar price tag to raise a wind turbine might give you sticker shock, but over the course of their lifetimes, onshore wind farms have the lowest cost of any form of energy. According to the latest analysis from financial firm Lazard, the amortized cost—what the money-folk call the “unsubsidized levelized cost of energy”—is $50 per megawatt-hour for onshore wind. (Utility-scale solar is the next-cheapest at $60/MWh.) Compare that to $70/MWh for gas, $117/MWh for coal, and $168/MWh for the so-called “peaker” plants that kick on in times of high demand. Offshore wind is pricier at $106/MWh, but that cost has been on a steady decline, and forecasters say it should hit $63/MWh by 2030.

5. How noisy are wind turbines?

Despite what you might have heard, the whoosh of a wind turbine isn’t much louder than a refrigerator. And, no, it won’t make you go nutty. At a distance of 300 meters—the common distance, or “setback,” a large-scale turbine sits from the nearest home—the sound of a utility-scale, land-based turbine falls between 35 and 48 decibels, according to the Department of Energy. For reference, a running fridge hits around 50 decibels, and city traffic is closer to 70. Offshore turbines, meanwhile, hum 10 to 20 decibels lower than shipping noise. 

6. How consistent is wind energy? 

More consistent than you might think. No, gusts aren’t a 24/7/365 thing. But turbines usually need only a gentle breeze of 6 to 9 miles per hour to get moving. And, as wind speeds pick up, so does the energy produced: Each time the speed doubles, a turbine’s output octuples.

That said, wind energy isn’t meant to exist on its own. While it’s true that our ability to transmit electricity is in need of capacity upgrades, wind, solar, and battery storage can together supply the majority of what the U.S. needs, according to data crunched by Princeton University. In some states, wind already delivers the lion’s share of electricity: Iowa’s mix is 59% wind, and in Kansas 52% of its electrons comes from gusts. California, though, might be the biggest proof point debunking claims that renewable sources are unreliable. A study in the journal Renewable Energy found that The Golden State met 100% of its electricity demand for 10 hours on 98 of 116 days in 2024—a major validation for the stability and reliability of a renewable grid, and a foil against misinformation that habitually blames turbines for blackouts. 

7. How much land do wind farms take up?

According to analysis from Princeton University, the U.S. will need to dedicate between 603,678 and 2,479,208 acres to turbines in order to achieve net-zero emissions. Those numbers might sound massive, but this is a game of comparisons. When Bloomberg tallied up land-use totals, they found that the country uses around 81 million acres for all its energy needs, which includes 4.4 million acres for natural gas, 3.5 million for oil, and 6.7 million for wind. 

Why doesn’t that estimate square with Princeton? Wind footprints are deceptive: Of the land dedicated to wind, only 0.7 million acres are taken up by access roads and turbines—the rest is the space between the spinners. That means land can be dual-use, with the ample spaces between serving as farmland or pastures. One 2024 study found that installing a turbine typically uses only 5% of the land that could be used for other purposes, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory says it could be as little as 2%. It’s also totally safe for crops and livestock to be right up on turbines—which isn’t something you can say for fossil-fuel extraction sites. 

8. What happens to turbines when they’re taken out of commission? 

The average wind turbine lasts between 20 and 25 years, and as many as 9,000 get decommissioned in the U.S. every year—a number that’s set to jump to 20,000 in the next 15 years. What happens then? It depends. Turbine towers are made from recyclable materials like aluminum, steel, and copper. Danish wind mega-company Ørsted (you’ve probably seen them in the headlines a lot lately), can currently recycle 85% to 95% of their turbines—mostly the steel. That claim tracks with estimates in peer-reviewed journals, too. 

The sticky part here are the blades, which are usually made from fiberglass composite. Though a lot of them used to head straight to the landfill, an entire micro-industry has sprung up to repurpose the up to 350-foot-long airfoils. In 2022, Tennessee-based Carbon Rivers started using a chemical process to separate out the fiberglass for use in the automotive and shipping industries and/or in textiles, and Washington-based Global Fiberglass Solutions recycles blades into composite panels, railroad ties, and plastic pellets. It will take a mix or more companies like these—along with mandates and incentives from policymakers—to keep landfills from becoming blade graveyards. But it’s also important to remember that trashed turbine tonnage is quite small compared to coal ash, plastic waste, electronic waste, or even our own garbage.