LED Luminaries produce huge energy benefits. Compared to traditional technologies what are the main benefits of LED?

Everybody today is shouting from the roof tops about LED technology but it's not the answer to all prays. However it certainly offers us some tangible solutions for existing traditional technologies. If we have a look at a 35 Watt HID lamp for example we can in quite a good way offer a 2000 lumen LED alternative that could reduce energy by  almost 50%. The other principle benefit of course is maintenance and you hear lots of things in the market of 50,000 hours life time that really does offer significant maintenance benefits over its traditional pre-decease, so certainly energy and lifetime there the two key fundamental elements to me.  If we add on top of that the fact that LED is easy to control offers us some other unique advantages over the traditional high intensity discharge lamps.