Utility plants supply the required energy demands to industrial processes. Several authors addressed the synthesis and design of those plants. Environmental concerns require to consider minimization of global emissions from utility plants and regional power plant as an additional objective, for which no multiperiod optimization models able to cope with the time varying demands, have been made available yet. This paper presents an extension of the Iyer and Grossmann [Comput. Chem. Eng. 21 (8) (1997) 787; 22 (7-8) (1998) 979] model to synthesis and multiperiod operational planning in order to include the global emissions of atmospheric pollutants issues coming from the fuels burning. A new five-step algorithm is introduced to solve this multi-objective model. One motivation example enables us to compare the different units and fuel selection and also the operation periods of an industrial utility system taking in account the electrical power import/export policy and environmental concerns. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.