A reality in 20 years time:

Someone in London decides the winter cold infection rate is trending higher than they'd like. The environmental impact of all those tissues is going to impact the net-zero allocation. They impose a range limit on all cars with the click of a mouse.

Tissue sales see a steep bump as people use their limited range to hit the shops and stock-up. They'll be at home more for a while. The instant reporting on this spike is seen as a leading indicator of an impending increase in colds. Net-zero must be protected at all costs.

So the algorithm shuts down lots of remaining fuel-burning power generation, mostly fast reaction gas turbine facilities that provide energy when the sun don't shine & the wind don't spin the turbines - renewable surplus exported through interconnects count towards offsets.

This offlining of capacity narrows the generation margin. Overnight there is a lull in the wind and the smart grid maintains stability by sucking power from your car, you won't be needing it - they assert. It's not enough so they suck on your home battery too.

The recent surge retailers saw results in their facilities and fleets pulling much more current overnight. By 5.30am the grid has hit a critical point. Embedded energy storage is depleted. Several gas turbine power plants are in maintenance to make best use of the shut-down order

Brown-outs begin followed by rolling blackouts that darken the nation in a patchwork pattern that reflects the algorithm's priority - London sparkles as do the commuter belt spokes radiating beyond the M25.

Pontefract is dark, still, and bitingly cold...

87% of the town's homes are electrically heated now. Despite the hideous insulation jackets glued to their walls they are quickly getting chilly inside, in the dark. The cold snap that brought the winter colds and wind lull sucking the heat out of pitch dark homes as cough echo

It'll be dawn soon and then the solar will come on-stream. It'll take a few hours of sun to stabilise the grid and initiate a 'Public Power-up' - No making a cuppa when the lights come on, people. The energy wardens will know if you boil your kettle & impact everyone's grid.

The still frigid air hanging over Britain means dawn doesn't quite deliver the same punch to those solar farms. Morning mist hangs in the air. Reservoirs all over the nation have been dumping their water through their hydro stations all night to keep the grid stable.

All that water flowing through river valleys feeds the mists through much of the morning. The sun never quite manages to burn it off. Those solar farms put out a fraction of their expected energy. By the time the sun does make them glint there's barely three hours of daylight

The grid managers demand the turbine plants come back online. But that won't happen any time soon. The contract engineers 'activated' to do the maintenance haven't arrived on sight yet so can't release them from the hold - a manual process for health & safety regulation reasons.

What would keep these essential workers from carrying out their engineering duties? Well, many engineers' vehicles didn't get essential worker mobility permit code loaded before grid brown-outs destabilised the data-net.

To compound that the EV battery-drain protocol pushed all their vehicles into a lock-out. They won't get any updates over the data-net until they replenish their batteries to a minimum safe level. The cells still have power but that's a reserve for heating & cooling the cells.

Old grey-beard engineers lament all this advancement created by idiots who've never turned a spanner and know nothing of how fragile systems are and how everything will break, and usually at the worst time in the worst way.

They tell of their days as the last of the apprentices. How one of their tasks was to ensure the engineers' transit van was always topped off with fuel at the end of every work day. They chuckle about how they'd get a mars bar as a reward from the gaffer every time at the garage

"Ah, Mars bars - remember when we could eat all that sugar. My god did we need it on days like this after going up and down ladders on a double shift!" said the old grey-beard engineer. His chuckle leaves a wisp of his breath on the now frigid air of his regulation 50sq m abode

He unplugs the electric vehicle knowing how it will take the embeded home battery into a fault state if this black-out persists much longer. He keeps glancing at his phone. The red flashing LED signalling he's about to go data-dark until things get sorted.

The notifications from management keep coming, each one sucking more life from his phone. He rations how many times he unlocks it and replies. Things are precarious. Tier One power users are about to go dark in some areas. Their on site diesel generators will kick in soon.

Those diesels often result in all political hell breaking loose within minutes as people tattle to their MP that they are running... "What about net-zero this week, we won't get our UBI top-ups if we miss the line. I don't mind being cold, sod em. Turn them off now!"

Those well-lighted, warmed offices in London are all a bustle as quiet men and women with white collars and cut fingernails conceive, order, move and second all manner of fixes. They even talk of revisiting the political deceleration on cross channel electrical interconnects

You see, France will suck up all the excess renewable energy Britain generates but in times of UK grid instability the interconnects flow only to France, absorbing spikes. Its abundance of nuclear energy ready at the flick of a switch would be so useful to Britain now. But no.

Political pressure in the UK saw to it our grid would commit only to renewables. Domestic nuclear would be ages out and no further new nuclear energy could be used - that included imported from abroad. So until mists lift and winds pick-up we're in for a chilly time.

And so went the last week of November 2040. A handful of Oldtimer drivers managed to get some engineers to the turbine plants eventually, a couple were killed doing so as mobs angry about not getting the Net-Zero UBI supplement blamed Peugeot 405 & Golf Diesel preservationists

It took just over six days to stabilise the grid and it was weeks before full mobility could be restored to much of the country's people. There was enormous food waste and the re-stock pushed carbon emissions way up. The next two years of carbon rationing will be very grim.

UBI Net-Zero Supplements probably won't be paid for at least a year. Not that anyone who'd won a carbon offset draw could actually use it on a holiday anyway since they'd likely be voided. So it'll be a summer spent on the doorstep soaking up vitamin D for most. They'll need it.

So yeah - that's probably how I die in 2040. I expect I'll be that Mk4 VW Golf driver who is dragged from his vehicle by an angry UBI crazed mob. It'll probably be a pompous Barrister with a baseball bat that does me in. He'll boast about it on twitter, London will laugh at it.