What if a flagship HVDC transmission megaproject is cancelled mid-build?
Cancelling a flagship continent-spanning HVDC line mid-build strands remote wind/solar, modestly trimming copper/industrial demand tied to the build-out. The nearest reads are repeatedly delayed mega-interconnectors like Germany's SuedLink and the UK-Morocco Xlinks uncertainty. Forward angle: the macro impact is negligible; the real signal is that long-distance transmission remains the Achilles heel of renewables integration, keeping stranded-generation and curtailment risk elevated.
Every number ships with its receipt — the odds, the range, the precedents, and a public grade at Reality Check. The statistical machinery that produces it is proprietary.
The butterfly cascade
How this trigger trickles across markets, left → right — the root shock, its first‑order moves, then the ripple effects. Drag any node; tap a market for its real price history.
Resolution timeline — how this probability is moving
Our model's odds (electric blue) over time vs the market's (Polymarket, amber), from the past toward the 1–3 years horizon. Each dot is a real macro event that nudged the probability — green pushed it up, red pushed it down. Tap a dot for the source. Loading the probability audit trail…
What it would mean
If this plays out, it is a mixed shock. A flagship continent-spanning HVDC transmission line is cancelled mid-build, stranding remote wind and solar capacity. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Industrial demand ▼ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.