The Scottish government has green-lighted one of the world’s biggest wind farms, just days after President Donald Trump ranted about “windmills” while visiting the country.
The U.S. president was in Scotland to visit his golf courses in South Ayrshire and Aberdeenshire, the latter of which has a history with wind farms. While Trump International Golf Links in Aberdeen was still being built, Aberdeen Renewable Energy Group also started constructing a row of wind turbines that impeded the view at his course.
That started a long obsession with the structures that he wrongly calls windmills. And despite his latest protestations in Scotland, the country’s government has now given the go-ahead to a mega wind farm, one of the world’s largest.
The Berwick Bank project, which would be positioned 23 miles off the east coast in the North Sea, will boast up to 307 of Trump’s big renewable enemies.
The whole project hangs on whether the company can come up with a suitable wildlife compensation plan, however.
Such a plan is necessary because the structures could “kill tens of thousands of seabirds,” according to the BBC. That, of course, is one of Trump’s major gripes with the structures.
“Stop the windmills! You are ruining your countries. I really mean it,“ he told reporters on the tarmac at Glasgow’s Prestwick Airport on Friday.
“It’s so sad. You fly over and you see the windmills all over the place ruining your beautiful fields and valleys and killing your birds, and—if they are stuck in the ocean—ruining your oceans,” he went on.
He is also irritated by the optics, saying the turbines are ugly. The president has also wrongly claimed that they cause cancer.
The White House did not immediately return the Daily Beast’s request for comment on the new project.
Conservation groups agree with the president on the impact the wind farm is likely to have on nature.
Five charities, led by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds Scotland, have called Scotland’s decision to approve the farm a “very dark day for seabirds.”
The project would generate enough electricity to power all of the country’s homes—two times over—every year.
Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes said the green light had been given after “extremely careful consideration.” She added that it is a move that will help in “tackling the climate crisis.”
U.K. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said it “boosts our mission to make Britain a clean energy superpower.”
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