Donald Trump compares wind farms to Lockerbie disaster

American billionaire Donald Trump has described wind farms as “a disaster” on par with the infamous Lockerbie airline bombing disaster, after his legal challenge to a planned offshore wind farm in the vicinity of his golf resort in Aberdeenshire was rejected.

The US businessman is a vocal opponent of wind farms – in particular, the planned £230 million European Offshore Wind Deployment Centre (EOWDC) that he says would spoil the view from the golf course at Menie.

Trump International Golf Club Scotland and the Trump Organisation went to the Court of Session in Edinburgh for a judicial review of the Scottish government’s decision not to hold a public inquiry on the windfarm application and of their decision to grant consent for the project.

But his bid to overturn approval for the experimental project was dismissed on Monday by Lord Doherty, who said he was not persuaded it could be fairly concluded there was a real possibility of any bias in the decision-making process, or that the decision not to hold an inquiry had been unreasonable or unlawful.

Trump has vowed to appeal. “It was only a skirmish, we haven’t lost the battle,” he said from Ireland, where he has turned his attention to a “major investment” in the golf resort at Doonbeg, Co Clare.

“Wind farms are a disaster for Scotland,” Trump told the Irish Times on Wednesday. “Like Pan Am 103 [the 1988 bombing of a US bound flight over Lockerbie]. They make people sick with the continuous noise. They’re an abomination and are only sustained with government subsidy.

“Scotland is in the middle of a revolution against wind farms. People don’t want them near their homes ruining property values,” he said.