Lost in all the attention to the Trump administration’s effort to scuttle President Barack Obama’s clean power plan is its attempt to prop up the struggling coal industry by doing something very un-Republican — subsidizing it.

Last month, Rick Perry, the secretary of energy, asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission — the independent agency that regulates electricity markets — to adopt a new rule to pay certain coal and nuclear plants more than they would otherwise earn in a competitive market. In essence, consumers would pay these plants a premium for electricity that competitors could produce, and are already producing, more cheaply.

Mr. Perry’s plan is premised on two unfounded claims: First, it assumes that coal and nuclear power plants, because they can stockpile fuel on site, are uniquely able to enhance the “reliability and resiliency” of the electric power grid, especially in times of fuel supply disruptions. Second, it assumes that those plants are being driven out of business by unfair subsidies to renewable-energy producers, as Mr. Perry has repeatedly claimed or implied.

But a Department of Energy study conducted under Mr. Perry’s direction concluded otherwise. In fact, the retirements of aging coal and nuclear plants, the study showed, have not compromised reliability, the term used to describe the grid’s ability to keep the lights on under normal conditions. While the grid might need more bolstering in the future, “reliability is adequate today despite the retirement of 11 percent of the generating capacity available in 2002, as significant additions from natural gas, wind, and solar have come online since then,” the report noted.