Something I have never really taken into consideration before was how often I personally don’t think about light usage.  My dorm room has almost all LED lights, but I personally bought them for convenience in college, I didn’t really think about it in environmentally friendly terms.  With doing some research I found that about 5% of LED light’s energy is converted into heat while 95% is converted into light.  They also use a LOT less power than a typical fluorescent light, using a 36 watt vs a fluorescent’s 84 watt light.  By replacing fluorescent lights in your house, that brings down the emission of greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere as well as reduces the demand of power plants.  Since it is unlikely that everyone will transition to LED lights within the next 5 years, a smaller goal when it comes to energy consumption is to turn off the lights when exiting a room or not having them on at all when it is not needed, for instance in the broad daylight.  A lot of the time fluorescent lights will also have toxic substances within the light bulb such as mercury.  When it comes to LED lights, they contain no toxic substances, have fewer lights needed to achieve the same level of brightness as fluorescent and incandescent lights, and have a longer lifespan, which leads to less carbon emissions (and the less likely you’ll have to replace the lights, so you’ll spend less money.  As someone who likes to decorate, and have those twinkly lights in my dorm room that many other college students my age have, it’s a lot more cost efficient and better for the environment to have compared to other options when it comes to light.  Go out and buy yourself a strip of those color changing LED lights to “spice up” your room!

resources:

https://www.energy.gov/eere/articles/study-environmental-benefits-leds-greater-cfls

https://www.sepco-solarlighting.com/blog/the-advantages-of-led-lights-for-the-environment