German far-right and Trump try to stop the advance of wind energy

• Party president Weidel criticizes “windmills of shame” at AfD event
• The energy association BDEW calls such explosions “devastating”

Germany’s far-right AfD party warned it would dismantle wind farms if it gained power, triggering a scathing response from the country’s energy industry.

The Alternative für Deutschland party would “tear down all wind turbines”, President Alice Weidel said at a party convention in Riesa on Saturday. “Down with these windmills of shame.”

The comments echo US President-elect Donald Trump, who has long opposed technology and said last week that he did not want new windmills built when he took office. In Germany, parties are heading for early elections on February 23 and the AfD is in second place in the polls after the conservatives.

However, the far right’s chances of forming a government are slim, as the other democratic parties have ruled out forming a coalition with it.

Weidel — elected as the party’s leading candidate at the convention — later tried to walk back her comments in an interview with German news agency DPA, saying she was referring to a local issue in the state of Hesse. However, the AfD states in its election platform that it “rejects further expansion of wind energy” and has called for cuts to renewable subsidies.

“These destructive attacks are devastating,” Kerstin Andreae, president of the country’s energy association BDEW, said in a statement on Monday.

German offshore wind energy group BWO also reacted, saying that Russian President Vladimir Putin would be the main beneficiary of such an anti-wind policy, as he maintains a dependence on imported fossil fuels.

At a government press conference in Berlin on Monday, a spokesman for the Economy Ministry said he could not comment on Weidel’s statement, but “in general, fundamental rights and property rights apply” to wind projects.

With information from Bloomberg*