Economic Development Impacts of Wind Turbine Development in U.S. Counties

We model the marginal impacts of wind turbine development on county-level changes in per capita income and employment in 15 states from 2000 to 2008. Using propensity score matching and spatial econometric techniques, we find that the total marginal impact on per capita income of wind turbine development (measured in MW per capita) when controlling for spatial effects was statistically significant with a value of $21,604 per MW. This estimate is within the range of values estimated in the literature using input-output models. Our ex post estimates of employment impacts are not precise enough to inform the validity of ex ante employment impacts from input-output models