Campaigners opposed to an offshore wind farm within sight of the D-Day beaches have called the plan to name the turbines after allied ships a “cynical” move, reports The Times.
EDF, the largely French state-owned electricity company behind the project, wants to give each of the 64 turbines the name of a vessel that took part in D-Day, for example HMS Glasgow, a light cruiser, HMS Fury, an F-class destroyer, or USS Satterlee, a US Navy destroyer.
The company said that the aim was to “integrate” the memory of the landings into the wind farm, which would produce up to 450MW of energy and provide electricity for 630,000 people in Normandy.
But Laurent Malhomme, the administrator of Libre Horizon, which describes itself as an association of residents and “people attached” to the areas affected by turbines, said: “It is a form of cynicism and of memory washing where they pretend that they are not harming the zone whilst they are really wrecking Europe’s biggest maritime cemetery.”