US President Donald Trump again attacked wind power when he spoke at the G7 summit in the French town of Biarritz.

“We’re the number-one energy producer in the world,” Trump is quoted as saying by the Bloomberg news wire, responding to a question about climate change.

“I’m not going to lose that wealth on dreams, on windmills, which, frankly are not working all that well.”

Trump before his comment skipped a key meeting on climate and biodiversity in Biarritz, at which other world leaders were also discussing how to react to fires blazing across the Amazon rain forest.

The President previously has claimed wind turbines cause cancer and are a graveyard for birds.

He has been less hostile to offshore wind in the United States, but for years did fight a 93MW ground-breaking offshore test field that could be seen by golfers from his planned Aberdeenshire country club on shore.

Trump’s at times bizarre comments so far don’t seem to have harmed wind power expansion in the US, have been ridiculed by the media there, and even met opposition from politicians in his own Republican Party, such as the senators for Iowa, Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst, who called Trump’s claims “idiotic” and “ridiculous.”

Worse for the industry, however, is Trump’s trade war against China and other nations that raised the price of steel and aluminium – key materials in wind turbines – and lithium, which is used in storage components.