This paper presents an efficient and reliable evolutionary-based approach to solve the Optimal Power Flow (OPF) problem by considering the emission issue. The OPF problem has been widely used in power system operation and planning for determining electricity prices. Therefore, the conventional optimal power flow cannot meet the environmental protection requirements, because it only considers generation cost minimization. The multi-objective optimal power flow considers economical and emission issues. By adding the emission objective in the optimal power flow problem, this problem become more complicated than before and it needs to be solved with an accurate algorithm. This paper proposes an algorithm based on the Shuffle Frog Leaping Algorithm (SLFA) to solve the multi-objective OPF problem. Furthermore, this paper presents a modified SLFA called MSLFA algorithm which profits from a mutation in order to reduce the processing time and improve the quality of solutions, particularly to avoid being trapped in local optima. The IEEE 30-bus test system is presented to illustrate the application of the proposed problem. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.