Decentralized energy systems are thought to have great potential for supplying electricity, cooling, and heating to buildings. A decentralized system combining a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) with an absorption chiller-heater (ACH) is proposed. The CO2-emissions and costs of using different configurations of this SOFC-based system to provide an office building in Tokyo with electricity, cooling and heating are calculated by using an SOFC-model and an absorption-chiller model together with data for cooling and heating loads measured at an office building in downtown Tokyo. The results are compared with the CO2-emissions and costs of a conventional system that obtains the base electricity requirements as well as electricity for an electric chiller-heater system from the central power grid. The fully decentralized SOFC-based energy system could result in a potential CO2 reduction of over 30% at an estimated cost increase of about 70% compared to the conventional system. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.