Billionaire Donald Trump "will fight any approval of an offshore wind farm overlooking his Scottish golf resort in the courts for years," according to Peter Woodifield of BLOOMBERG. George Sorial, the exec in charge of the project, said that Trump is "deferring plans to build a five-star hotel, 500 homes and 950 rental apartments" at the £750M ($1.17B) resort until a decision on the proposal to build 11 offshore wind turbines in Aberdeen Bay is made. Sorial said, "It will be many years before we have exhausted the appeals process, which we will certainly do. We are confident they will never be built." Trump has been at "loggerheads for more than a year" with Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond over his "flagship policy of making the nation the hub of European wind power" by generating all of its electricity from renewable sources by '20. Trump, who two days ago submitted plans to build a second golf course on his 1,400 acre Menie estate, said that the policy "will hurt Scottish tourism." Trump told Scottish lawmakers last year that he had had "assurances from Salmond, and his predecessor Jack McConnell, that the wind-farm plan wouldn’t proceed because of objections from the U.K. Ministry of Defence" (BLOOMBERG, 2/13).
