"essential priority" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it in contexts when you want to emphasize something as a priority that is essential or indispensable. For example, "Ensuring the safety of our employees is an essential priority."
For energy policy – another essential priority – Obama included a cap-and-trade plan in his budget.
The essential priority is FINISHING THE HAT (Knopf, $39.95), the satisfyingly sizable new book containing the collected lyrics of Stephen Sondheim from 1954 to 1981.
Just after Sept. 11, it seemed that the enormity of the experience was going to undermine the doctrines of postmodern relativism that typically affirmed that no particular judgment has any essential priority over any other, and bring to an end too the almost reflexive analyses that consistently cast the West as the world's unambiguous villain.
The essential priority of protecting children who attend schools that are vulnerable to collapse during an earthquake is irrefutable.
Environmental issues stimulate the elaboration of new powertrain systems and fuels for transport as an essential priority to decrease air pollution and green house gases emissions.
An essential priority is the remediation of industrial soils contaminated by persistent organic pollutants, since they represent a significant hazard to terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and food security [2].
But the starkness also has the effect of reconfirming theater's essential priorities, and especially the centrality of the actor.
This year, my budget will cut it again and reduce or eliminate more than 140 programs that are performing poorly or not fulfilling essential priorities.
He was deeply involved in the report on research and development in nuclear power, and a visionary report on essential priorities for the science base.
After the end of the cold war, he asked why the nation's "vast intelligence apparatus continues to grow even as government resources for new and essential priorities fall far short of what is necessary," as he put it in remarks in the Senate in 1997.
We will make sure that federal spending serves the common interests... that failed programs are not rewarded... and that discretionary spending is going where it belongs -- to essential priorities like job training, the security of our citizens, and the care of our veterans.
