As a member of the United States House Energy Subcommittee on Energy and Power, Burgess has been active in the debate over energy policy. In 2011, he submitted an amendment to the 2012 Energy and Water Appropriations Act to defund part of the act that established higher efficiency standards for household light bulbs. However, Burgess' claims that the standards represented a "ban" on conventional lightbulbs were rated as "Mostly False" by the fact checking website PolitiFact.com. On April 30, 2015, Burgess once again introduced an amendment to the $35.4 billion fiscal 2016 energy and water spending bill which would defund the Department of Energy enforcement of incandescent light bulb efficiency standards, a measure which passed 232–189, largely on a party line vote