If you’ve ever visited Los Angeles, then me telling you that there are 140,000 streetlights in the city might actually sound low. But, that’s how many there are, and that’s how many streetlights Los Angeles is retrofitting with LEDs to save energy and money.

Over the next five years, L.A. and the Clinton Climate Initiative will switch out the old lights in all the streetlights in town, and replace them with energy-efficient lights. The money saved will pay back the initial loan necessary to make the conversion. GreenBiz.com has the facts and figures:

The upgraded lighting system is expected to save the city $48 million in energy and maintenance costs and cut carbon emissions by 197,000 tons over a seven-year period…After paying back the loan, the city is expect to save about $10 million a year in costs, reduce electricity consumption for lighting by at least 40 percent and cut carbon emissions by about 40,500 tons a year. The initiative estimates the effect is the equivalent of taking 6,700 passenger vehicles off the road annually.

That is quite a bit of monetary and environmental savings. LED lights last about twice as long as conventional lights, the article tells us, so…well, I don’t have a conclusion for that sentence. They just do.

Los Angeles is also giving two CFL bulbs to every household in the city as a part of another greening initiative. When you consider that there are over a million homes in L.A., that adds up, too.

The free light bulb program is projected to save up to 240 GWh of energy and prevent the release of 131,000 metric tons of CO2 each year — the equivalent of taking 24,000 cars off the road or enough energy to power 40,000 homes for a year.

If you’d like to save some money (about thirty bucks over the life of one CFL bulb) and help the environment, takepart to learn what kind of CFL bulbs are right for you.