What if utilities that built generation for AI load face stranded assets when demand falls short?
Utilities that committed generation and grid capex to speculative AI load face stranded assets and rate-base disputes when promised data-center demand fails to arrive.
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 risk-off shock. Utilities that committed generation and grid capex to speculative AI load face stranded assets and rate-base disputes when promised data-center demand fails to arrive. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — AI capex ▼ · Credit spreads ▲ · Industrial demand ▼ · Risk appetite ▼ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.