What could push up energy costs and stall the growth of manufacturing in the United States? Dangers abound, but what’s most ominous is a deliberate effort to increase the cost of electricity to support uncompetitive power plants.

Subsidizing money-losing nuclear reactors is the latest misstep in the long history of overzealous government intervention in the energy marketplace. State legislatures in New York and Illinois have approved as much as $10 billion in subsidies through zero-emission credit programs to keep aging nuclear plants open for the next decade. Lawmakers in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and New Jersey are considering the same.