EDIT: I got the HDRIs from HDRI Haven, so I know that they work.
Whoa, that’s super wierd, I’ve never experienced that.
@gregzaal is one of the masters of HDR related stuff, maybe has an idea?
Hmmmmm
Hardware limitations, 8k is probably the limit for your GPU in terms of texture size.
Where can I find documentation or specs on the texture size limit of a GPU?
You can probably check using something like this. But it may be not too reliable, try in another app, like godot just to be safe.
With only 2gb of video ram to work with, it doesn’t surprise me that you are running into issues loading a giant HDRI like that.
Why would you need a 16k hdri?
16k HDRI loaded into memory will take up at least 2gb all on its own.
If I render an empty scene with just an 16k HDRI, blender reports peak memory usage of 4.7GB on the first render:
…and 2.2 GB for subsequent renders:
This is with eevee too, and it’s not black for me so definitely something with your hardware.
I was thinking the same thing. If you separate it, 0.25k is sufficient for diffuse, 1-4k sufficient for regular slightly rough glossy. Clipped, so that a sunlamp does the real sun lighting instead of the hdri. 16 I guess could be useful for zoomed in LDR camera background plates. 16k HDRI? I just don’t get it. HDRIs slow down the render, and higher res require way longer preparation times (pre-MIS mapping?) before rendering starts.
I still keep them around (not sure why though), but I’ve put all the massive ones in a directory “never use”. 
