U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright on Monday condemned the 2050 net-zero emissions pledge as a "sinister goal" and criticized the U.K.'s clean energy policies, according to Reuters.

Former President Joe Biden set the target in 2021, relying on subsidies to boost clean energy and electric vehicles in the fight against climate change.

Wright said, speaking at a London conference: "Net Zero 2050 is a sinister goal. It's a terrible goal. The aggressive pursuit of it - and you're sitting in a country that has aggressively pursued this goal - has not delivered any benefits, but it's delivered tremendous costs."

At the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship event, Wright emphasized his top priority: for the government to "get out of the way" of oil, gas, and coal production.

The Reuters report states that Wright highlighted the Trump administration’s approval of the Commonwealth LNG export terminal in Louisiana—the first since Biden’s pause last year—stating, "We ended the pause and approved the Commonwealth LNG export terminal last Friday, and many more in the queue." Wright underscored hydrocarbons' necessity, adding, "The world simply runs on hydrocarbons, and for most of their uses, we don't have replacements."

Criticizing Britain's net-zero push, he argued it had harmed living standards and merely shifted emissions abroad. "No one's going to make an energy-intensive product in the United Kingdom any more. It's just been displaced somewhere else," he said, calling the policy "lunacy" that is impoverishing your own citizens in a delusion that this is somehow going to make the world a better place."

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, however, has made clean energy central to his economic strategy, focusing on offshore wind for job creation and growth. Former President Donald Trump also weighed in earlier, urging the U.K. to "open up" North Sea oil and gas and scrap wind farms.