September 21, 2009

Press Contact: Henry Sokolski, NPEC, 703-271-9852 or cell: 571-277-1815

Henry Sokolski, Executive Director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center (NPEC), today applauded Senator Daniel Akaka's (D-Hawaii) efforts to create an alternative energy peace corps. Akaka's legislation, S. 1675, The Energy Development Program Implementation Act of 2009, was introduced September 16. It requires the Secretary of Energy to detail what the U.S. government is doing with developing states to perfect and assess the economic viability of energy options other than coal, oil, and nuclear and to create an alternative energy peace corps. All of these measures were originally required by Title V of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Act of 1978.

"Senator Akaka deserves credit: Promoting economical alternative energy to slow the spread of dangerous nuclear technologies clearly made sense in 1978 and makes even more sense now," said Sokolski.

Implementing Title V of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Act of 1978 was one of the recommendations of The Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism that Sokolski serves on as commission member (see "actions" to implement Commission recommendation 3).

"You've got to think this is one initiative the White House would want to preempt and call its own," Sokolski noted. "It's Kennedyesque, green, nonproliferation friendly, disciplined by market economics, and already required by law."

NPEC first called for implementation of Title V in testimony before the House International Relations Committee in April 2005 and its executive director also made this recommendation in a 2005 article published in Arms Control Today. NPEC subsequently commissioned a series of economic energy projections for India, Pakistan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt with Dalberg Global Development Advisors, which advises the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the world's regional development banks.