UK energy secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh has urged the country to "electrify now" while taking a "pragmatic" approach to oil and gas licences, warning that the world was on course to miss key climate targets.

Fahnbulleh, appointed by Prime Minister Andy Burnham in July, said meeting Paris climate targets was "the first priority" requiring action at home. She blamed the previous Tory government for failing to create an industrial transition plan for Aberdeen, once Britain's oil and gas hub, where more than 70,000 jobs were lost over a decade.

She said she was "still going through all the evidence" on whether to reapprove two controversial North Sea fossil-fuel projects, Rosebank and Jackdaw, whose futures were thrown into doubt by a court ruling. While Labour's manifesto pledged no new exploration licences, the government has not shut down new production through "tiebacks" adjacent to existing fields.

Fahnbulleh, 46, attending Climate Week NYC in New York alongside predecessor Ed Miliband, now foreign secretary, rejected depictions as his protégé: "I think it's a bit patronising, even misogynistic," she said, insisting she was "my own person" with two decades in economics and policymaking.