NEM causal loop diagram — 14 stocks, 6 feedback loops. Click a loop above to isolate it, trace the causal chain, and see the system archetype. This is the analysis the Venn diagram structurally could not produce.
Reinforcing loops (vicious cycles)
R1 — Coal death spiral: Renewables depress wholesale price → coal unprofitable → coal exits → reliability gap → political intervention → investment uncertainty → slower renewable build → coal must stay longer → repeat.
R3 — Demand shock amplifier: Data centre growth (+25% pa) → wholesale price pressure AND transmission congestion → blocks renewable delivery → accelerates coal exit → feeds reliability gap. Absent from Venn diagram.
Balancing loops (self-correction)
B1 — Storage firming: High prices → battery economics attractive → storage deployed → reliability gap narrows → political pressure eases. Operates on 2-5 year lag vs quarterly political cycle.
B2 — Social licence brake: Coal exits → community damage → resistance → slows further exits. The "Community" dimension Iberdrola added — modelled here as a feedback mechanism, not a category.
B3 — Market signal correction: High prices → attract new investment → more build → prices fall. Only works when R2 (investment uncertainty) doesn't overwhelm the price signal.
How To Read This
Why the CLD matters
This is the point in the sequence where the NEM becomes legible as a system rather than a collection of events. The same instability is being reproduced through recurring feedback behaviour.
The master loop
The coal-death-spiral dynamic is the central reinforcing loop. Renewable build weakens coal profitability, exits raise reliability pressure, intervention raises uncertainty, and slower replacement build keeps ageing coal in the system longer.
What the Venn missed
Large new data-centre demand is not just another issue in the trilemma. It is an amplifier that sharpens pressure on price, congestion, and replacement timing across the system.
Why the system oscillates
Balancing loops exist, but they move more slowly than the reinforcing loops and the political cycle. That is why policy movement can look predictable without actually stabilising the system.
What this page adds
A classification view tells you where events sit. A systems view tells you why the same kinds of events keep recurring. This page is the causality instrument in the wider analytical suite.