National Lights Out

Mission Statement 

A Lights Out event brings students and staff together on a Friday night to turn off lights in buildings across a college campus. Our mission is to engage universities from across the nation to save energy, promote the reduction of carbon footprints, and save some money in the process by running their own Lights Out events.

Illini Lights Out, a program at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, has found great success at each event — engaging hundreds of students, turning off thousands of lights, and saving hundreds of dollars in energy bills and tons of CO2 from being emitted.

We hope that universities will conduct their own Lights Out events, adding them to a nationwide total. Together, we can see how much of a difference we’ve made as a nation in reducing carbon emissions and promoting sustainable actions. Below, you will find resources on how you can make this possible at your university!

Getting Started

Event Materials

Interested in conducting your own Lights Out event? Reference this step-by-step guide to pre-planning, running an event, post event, and logistics!

A premade Lights Out sheet to give out to students and instructions for staff members who come to your event. For your convenience, we have also made a sample data sheet to track your data for after the event. 

Lights Out at University of Illinois

National Lights Out Data

Illini Lights Out (ILO) runs events twice a month on the University of Illinois’ Urbana-Champaign campus. Click the link below to find out more.

Upon completion of your events, we’d like your university to fill out the Nationwide Data Sheet. We will compile this data and release the results of everyone’s combined contributions once all pledged universities begin completing their first event.