WindEurope and European countries hit back at Trump claims

Trump made some wildly inaccurate claims with regard to China, which he said did not have operational wind farms (they have by a huge distance the largest installed capacity in the world).

In fact, he said, China was ‘making a fortune’ by selling wind turbines to ‘stupid people’ and using none themselves.

“We have a very limited number of Chinese turbines operating in Europe today,” said WindEurope spokesman Christoph Zipf. “Almost all turbines (we don’t communicate a number but it would be ca. 99%) in Europe are ‘European turbines’, meaning they are produced by one of our five European OEMs and assembled in Europe, creating jobs and tax revenues in Europe.

“Our latest report in December 2025 showed that 443,000 Europeans now work in wind (direct and indirect jobs). This number is set to rise to more than 600,000 by 2030 if we get the buildout of wind right. The bit that the Chinese were not building (installing) turbines in China is just wrong. China made up roughly 68% of all new wind power capacity added globally in 2024. 

“That’s GWEC data from their annual wind energy installation report and other GWEC reports.”

Trump claimed that the energy crisis in Europe was caused by the ‘new green scam – perhaps the greatest hoax in history’ – and that the US had avoided ‘the catastrophic collapse which befell every European nation’ because it had not taken on wind in any significant way.

In fact most of the offshore wind farms that Trump put on hold have now been re-instated by courts in the US.

Zipf said the cause of the energy crisis was the Nord Stream 2 sabotage ‘and Europe’s over reliance on Russia for fossil gas imports’.

“Nord Stream 2 exploded and cut off Europe’s gas supplies from one day to another,” he said. “The countries most affected by that were unsurprisingly those countries most exposed to Russian gas imports via the pipeline (Germany, Austria, others).

“It just so happens that Germany has a lot of wind as well. There is no causal connection to the high prices – which were caused by skyrocketing gas prices and expensive scrambles to buy gas from elsewhere.

“Trump’s logic is flawed anyway. Wind is actually essential to keeping the prices down, for example in the UK, where CfDs paid back £104 billion net benefit to UK consumers between 2010 and 2023.

The European Commission has not officially responded to the US presidents speech, but a Reuters report said Germany, Britain, Denmark, France, Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway and Luxembourg were preparing a joint pledge to expand offshore wind power despite Trump’s scorn.

In the UK, the last energy auction awarded a record 8.4GW of offshore wind.