CCS - ready when?

Getting CCS ready for commercial use is a complex affair - it's never been tried before at the scale required on power stations.

This is something which requires money - and if this money is not available the whole project can be set back.

Theage has just published something suggesting that CCS won't be in a position to contribute to the countries energy mix before 2020.
That's possible.

We shouldn't forget though that this applies to economies as a whole, and that to get it this far we need to apply the technology to individual power stations - which means CCS will be used well before this date.
For example, if we could get two learning cycles in before this date we're likely to assist in strenghening this deadline.
http://www.co2storage.org.uk/Publications/UKCCS/Gibbins08.pdf

Largely this is happening - amine capture (which is regarded as the most promising type of CCS in the short term) is being demonstrated with RWEnpower at Didcott, and then Aberthaw by around 2010.
I would guess that the governments CCS competition winner would also use this technology.

So;

CCS by 2020? Yes, of course.

CCS capturing 90% of the emissions of a power station by 2020? Probably a policital rather than a technical challenge.

CCS in in all of the countrys power stations by 2020? Possibly not.