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GREENSBORO — U.S. Rep. Howard Coble is among those urging colleagues in Congress to turn off the lights on a controversial provision of the 2007 energy bill.

The Greensboro Republican is a co-sponsor of a bill to repeal what some refer to — erroneously — as the incandescent bulb ban. Texas Reps. Joe Barton and Michael Burgess and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, all Republicans, were the original sponsors of the repeal measure.

The legislation is a long way from passing, but it is in keeping with Republican pledges to roll back laws they see as interfering with personal freedoms.

“It seems to me the Congress and the government is inserting its oars in waters where it doesn’t need to go,” Coble said Tuesday, adding that people ought to choose which kind of light bulb they want to use for themselves.

“This ought to be a personal decision rather than being an edict from on high.”

The 2007 bill sets energy efficiency standards for light bulbs. It doesn’t specifically ban incandescent bulbs, but it would phase out the cheap, 50 cents-a-piece, single-filament model based on Thomas Edison’s century-old design.

The rationale behind the bill had to do with cutting down the energy Americans use by making lighting fixtures more efficient. Rather than ban possession or use of any one bulb, it prohibits retailers from selling the less energy-efficient models, phasing in the new rules between 2012 and 2014.

One of the most common complaints about the bill has to do with the cost of alternatives to the energy inefficient bulbs.

Newer incandescent bulbs that would meet energy efficiency guidelines can cost $8 or more at retailers such as the Home Depot or Amazon.com.

Other energy-efficient lighting also is more expensive compared with its 20th century counterparts, including LED and compact fluorescent. Some consumers also don’t like the way light from those newer alternatives look.

The trade-off for consumers, said advocates for the bill, comes in lower energy bills and bulbs that last longer.

Barton and other sponsors also have complained that companies are shutting down incandescent bulb factories in the United States and moving newer production overseas. However, the companies involved say those moves are not related to the federal bill.

Before the federal law passed in 2007, state Rep. Pricey Harrison pushed a similar state law for North Carolina.

“I still get grief from people around the state about my bill,” the Greensboro Democrat said. People didn’t like being told they would have to give up their old reliable light bulbs, no matter that much of the energy used to run them turned into heat rather than light.

That measure died, despite arguments that switching from less efficient bulbs could cut down on the need for new coal-fired power plants and cut down on energy costs. Once the federal bill passed, Harrison said, state-level efforts seemed moot and she switched her attention to pushing legislation that would pay for recycling the compact fluorescent bulbs, which contain small amounts of mercury.

Of the federal repeal bill that Coble favors, Harrison called it “a step backward.”

Contact Mark Binker at (919) 832-5549 or mark.binker@news-record.com