Commentators and wind-power executives believe that President Trump’s hatred of wind turbines stems from his ultimately unsuccessful and costly attempts to prevent an “ugly” offshore wind farm being built near his Trump International Golf Links course in northeast Scotland.

As one senior wind supply executive told Recharge: “He lost in Scotland. Now he is acting like a little boy.”

From 2010, when the 11-turbine European Offshore Wind Deployment Centre (EOWDC) in Aberdeen Bay was given the go-ahead by the Crown Estate, Trump campaigned aggressively against it.

In typical Trump style, he lambasted the then Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond as “Mad Alex” and said Scotland would become a “third world wasteland” due to the “monsters” (ie, wind turbines) being installed in and off Scotland.

He then went on to tell a Scottish parliamentary committee that wind farms would “destroy” Scottish tourism, and when asked for supporting evidence, replied: “I am the evidence, I am considered a world-class expert in tourism.”

After multiple legal appeals in the Scottish courts, which delayed the project for several years, the UK Supreme Court finally ruled against Trump in December 2015.

In response to the ruling, the Trump Organisation released a statement that said: “History will judge those involved unfavourably and the outcome demonstrates the foolish, small-minded and parochial mentality which dominates the current Scottish government’s dangerous experiment with wind energy.”

In March this year, Scotland’s supreme civil court, the Court of Session, ruled that Trump International Golf Links must pay the Scottish government’s legal costs for three years’ worth of appeals.

The sum it had to pay was not disclosed.

Vattenfall’s 93.2MW EOWDC wind farm finally generated its first power in July last year, with project director Adam Ezzamel telling Recharge: “For us, the real irony is that Trump’s legal challenge may have delayed switch-on of the EOWDC by a couple of years, but that enabled us to increase the energy production by using technology, including larger turbines, that wasn’t available to us back then.”

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