The European Union has launched a legal challenge over the use of British parts in UK offshore wind farms.
It has submitted a complaint to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) - the first such move the EU has made since Brexit.
The UK Government asks offshore wind farm developers to say how many of the parts they are using are from Britain. And it insists the so-called "local-content" request is within the rules of the WTO.
Five new offshore wind factories have been set up in the UK over the past 12 months alone - leading to 3,000 jobs and involving £1.5billion of private investment.
On announcing the legal challenge yesterday, the EU said: "Under the UK's contracts-for-difference scheme, financial support is awarded to green energy projects (mostly offshore wind farms) in a bidding process.
"When assessing the bids, the UK Government applies a local-content criterion to determine the eligibility of operators and ultimately to pay out the financial support for the project.
"This incentivises operators to favour UK content in their applications, to the detriment of imported inputs.
"The EU considers this to be a breach of the WTO's national treatment principle, which prohibits WTO members from discriminating against imports in favour of domestic products.
"Moreover, such local-content criteria lead to losses in efficiency and raise prices for consumers, ultimately making the transition to a secure supply of renewable energy more difficult and costly."
But a Whitehall source told the Telegraph: "At a time when the West should be united in defeating Putin, this act of envy by Brussels is ill-judged, ill-timed. We should be working together to strengthen European clean energy security, not fighting this out in court. Our policies to boost Britain's offshore wind industry are comparable to many other schemes in the EU, so we are puzzled why Brussels is challenging our scheme when it does pretty much the same."
A Government spokesman added: "We are disappointed that the European Commission has taken this course of action at a time when we are focused on increasing our energy security and supply of home-grown renewable energy."
There has been mounting anger in Scotland in recent years at the amount of work for North Sea wind farms going abroad while businesses north of the border lose out.
Just last week, a union boss criticised the decision to send fabrication work for a major Scottish project to the Middle East.
GMB Scotland senior organiser Gary Cook said "hundreds of million of pounds" have gone to the UAE rather than Fife or Lewis, and he branded the move a "green jobs surrender".
UAE-based fabricator Lamprell has signed a major agreement to supply dozens of turbine jackets for the Moray West wind farm.
A value for the contract was not disclosed, but it is believed to be worth in excess of £150million.
Mr Cook said: "A big chunk of the renewables jobs bonanza promised by the Scottish Government over a decade ago has disappeared into the desert wind."
Moray West is being developed by Ocean Winds - a 50-50 joint venture between Spain's EDP Renewables and France's ENGIE.