Jun 22 2026
The Hon Penny Sharpe, MLC
NSW Minister for Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Heritage,
52 Martin Place, Sydney
NSW 2000
Dear Minister Sharpe,
We write regarding the Energy Legislation Amendment (Prioritising Renewable Energy) Bill 2026 (the Energy Legislation Bill) and its capability to declare an energy project or a class thereof a "priority energy project" (PEP).
Under the proposed changes a project can only be declared a PEP if it is for:
- transmission and distribution infrastructure;
- renewable energy generation; and
- energy storage or firming infrastructure, including battery storage, gas-fired firming generation, and pumped hydro, but excluding coal-fired and nuclear energy generation.
As an organisation concerned with healthcare through care of the environment, Doctors for the Environment Australia (DEA) welcomes changes that expedite the transition to renewable energy. However, we vehemently disagree with the inclusion of gas as a possible energy source for a PEP.
To consider gas as a possible energy source under a renewable energy amendment is factually incorrect and for that alone should not be included as a clause in this legislation. Such misleading of the public should be decried in the strongest possible terms.
Gas, being primarily methane, is a highly potent greenhouse gas with more than 80 times the greenhouse warming potential of carbon dioxide in the first 20 years after emission. Moving on from gas is vital if we are to have any hope of limiting global heating to 1.5℃ and curb the immense human and environmental health costs of climate change.
The National Climate Risk Assessment outlines the severe impacts to health and the environment that Australia faces from climate change. These include the impacts of heat, extreme weather, fires and smoke, changed patterns of infectious disease, food and water insecurity and mental ill health. A recent study shows that in NSW, child and youth hospitalisations for mental ill-health are increased with hotter weather and with higher emissions.
All of these will be made worse the longer we remain reliant on fossil fuels like gas.
Furthermore the air pollution from gas combustion harms local populations, being associated with respiratory, cardiovascular, neurological and obstetric mortality and morbidity.
We therefore implore you to remove any allowance for gas from this proposed amendment in order to protect human and environmental health, prevent further global heating and to avoid enshrining factually incorrect information into legislation.
Yours sincerely
Dr Kate Wylie
Executive Director,
Doctors for the Environment Australia