a dark and freezing-cold winter morning, you hear a noise coming from the frosty street outside your home. It sounds like someone barking orders. You lean against the window to look outside, feeling an icy chill from the glass on your face, and see a blue and white van with its headlights on, slowly driving down the road with a loudhailer on its roof. As it draws nearer you can hear the voice more clearly – it’s a public appeal for everyone to turn off their boilers and stop using gas. 

You look down at your phone and the first thing you see on Facebook and Twitter are new posts from the Government, asking us all to pull together and help conserve what gas the nation has left.

You turn on the TV and BBC One has ditched Homes Under The Hammer for a special announcement from the Prime Minister, explaining from 10 Downing Street that the energy crunch which has been building for days – already resulting in overnight power cuts – has reached a stage we all feared would never come. Negotiations are underway to secure more gas for the UK, says the PM, and hopefully it will only be for a few hours, but right now we all need to put on another jumper, wrap up and do our bit. 

Along the bottom of the screen flashes up a “BREAKING NEWS” banner. “Gas crisis,” is the headline. “National Grid declares a gas supply emergency – The UK could run out of gas TODAY!” 

This might sound farfetched, but that imaginary TV news banner is taken verbatim from a slide used in an official webinar by the National Grid, seen by i, explaining to power company officials how an energy crisis could unfold and what the industry would have to do. Loudhailers on vans and public appeals on social media and TV are all part of the formal emergency plans. And behind the scenes, many more preparations have been made.