Mapping and characterizing the visual impacts of the existing US wind turbine fleet

Visual impacts of wind turbines have been a persistent concern for wind energy development in the United States (US) for decades and remain a major source of project delays and cancellations. Assessments of visual impacts are frequently performed at a local scale for individual projects, but a comprehensive understanding of broader geographic patterns in visual impacts across the US is lacking. This paper presents a visual impact assessment of the existing land-based wind turbine fleet of the contiguous United States (CONUS). The assessment combines geographic information systems and 3D simulation methods to account for key factors driving the visual magnitude of impacts from the installed turbines. The results indicate that, despite the deployment of approximately 70,000 turbines and over 144 gigawatts of land-based wind in the CONUS, the visual impacts are very small when measured as a proportion of land area, population, and sensitive visual resources. Nonetheless, visual impacts are not evenly distributed: people experience a concentrated share in a small number of natural settings, primarily including plains, prairies, and deserts. Finally, we find that although increased density of wind development consistently leads to visual impacts across a greater proportion of land, it does not always lead to impacts to a greater share of the population. These findings suggest that visual impacts from wind energy are generally well-mitigated across the CONUS to date but also highlight the need for a deeper understanding of landscape sensitivity and individual perceptions of wind turbines in the most heavily impacted natural settings. •The existing wind turbine fleet of the contiguous US is assessed for visual impacts.•This assessment accounts for turbine size, orientation, exposure, and distance.•Visual impacts are low as a share of total land area, population, and visual resources.•Impacts to populations are highest in settings like plains, prairies and deserts.•Higher density of wind development impacts more land, but not always population.