When France legalised the current onshore-wind regime in 2011, it set a minimum distance of 500 metres between a turbine and the nearest home. Fifteen years later, that number is still the law - and still one of the shortest setbacks in Europe. Bavaria, by comparison, applies a 10H rule (ten times the turbine tip height, often above 2,000 m). So what does the evidence actually say?
Where 500 m comes from
The 500 m buffer was set by the 2011 arrete and was designed to keep maximum audible noise below the regulatory 35 dB(A) night-time background increase. That calculation relied on turbines whose tip height rarely exceeded 120 m. The current generation of onshore turbines reaches 180-230 m at tip, with larger blades sweeping a wider air volume - and producing more low-frequency content.
What the health studies actually found
The Health Canada 2014 study of 1,238 households near operational turbines found a statistically significant increase in reported "high annoyance" below 1,500 m, especially at night. The WHO European Environmental Noise Guidelines (2018) reached a similar conclusion: exposure above 45 dB(A) Lden is linked to increased annoyance, and current setbacks "should be reassessed" in light of taller turbines.
A literature review by Krogh (2011) collating 29 studies concluded that symptoms such as sleep disturbance, headaches and chronic stress dropped close to baseline at distances between 1.5 and 2 km from the turbine perimeter.
"The evidence base has moved faster than the statute book. Regulators still rely on setback values from pre-megawatt machines while nearby residents live next to 200-metre structures."
What ClearSpot shows you
We import the official parcs eoliens terrestres registry from data.gouv.fr, then colour every cell within 1.5 km of a turbine as "not clear" by default. You can slide the threshold up to 2 km if you are particularly sensitive to low-frequency noise. The map layer overlays both the legal buffer and the recommended buffer so you can see the delta at a glance.
Key takeaways
- Legal minimum in France: 500 m
- Threshold at which most health studies see symptoms fall to baseline: 1,500 m
- Conservative threshold recommended by acoustic engineers for tall (> 180 m) turbines: 2,000 m
None of this means turbines are dangerous - it means the safe distance is not a single number, and the law has not caught up with the latest designs.