By William James and Alex Lawler

LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright on Monday called a pledge to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050 a "sinister goal", and criticised the British government's attempts to hit clean energy targets.

Former President Joe Biden set a target in 2021 for the United States to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 to help fight climate change, in part by using subsidies to encourage an expansion of clean energy and electric vehicles.

"Net Zero 2050 is a sinister goal. It's a terrible goal," Wright said, speaking via videolink at a conference being held in London.

"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."

Wright also used a question and answer session at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship event to say his number one priority was for the government to "get out of the way" of the production of oil, gas and coal.

President Donald Trump's administration said on Friday it had granted a liquefied natural gas export license to the Commonwealth LNG project in Louisiana, the first approval of LNG exports after Biden paused them early last year.

"We ended the pause and approved the Commonwealth LNG export terminal last Friday, and many more in the queue," he said.

"The world simply runs on hydrocarbons and for most of their uses we don't have replacements."

On net zero, he took particular aim at Britain, saying its pursuit of a decarbonised energy system - which the current UK government wants to reach by 2030 - had damaged living standards and exported emissions elsewhere in the world.

"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.

"This is not energy transition. This is lunacy. This is impoverishing your own citizens in a delusion that this is somehow going to make the world a better place."

Prime Minister Keir Starmer has put clean energy at the heart of his strategy for Britain, banking on the development of the country's offshore wind resources in particular as the source of a new wave of highly skilled jobs and economic growth.

In January Trump, speaking before his presidential inauguration, criticised the British government's energy policy with a demand the country "open up" the ageing North Sea oil and gas basin and get rid of wind farms.

(Reporting by William James; Editing by Jan Harvey)