In IGCC power plants, hot gas desulfurization (HGD) represents an attractive solution to simplify syngas treatments and to improve the efficiency, potentially reducing the final cost of electricity. In the present study, the various consequences of the introduction of a HGD station in the power plant are discussed and evaluated, in comparison with conventional near-ambient temperature clean-up. Attention is paid to the potential improvements of the overall energy balance of the complete power station, along with the requirements of the sorbent regeneration process, to the influence of the desulfurization temperature and to the different solutions needed to control the NO(x) emissions (altered by the presence of HGD). The net performance of complete IGCC power plants (with HGD or with conventional desulfurization) were predicted, with reference to status-of-the-art solutions based on an entrained flow, dry-feed, oxygen-blown gasifier and on an advanced, FB-class combined cycle. The net efficiency experiences about 2.5% point improvement with HGD, even if a small reduction in the power output was predicted, when using the same combustion turbine. An exhaustive sensitivity analysis was carried out to evaluate the effects of different working conditions at the HGD station, e.g. desulfurization temperature and oxygen content in the gaseous stream for sorbent regeneration. According to the obtained results, these parameters have a weak influence on the efficiency. In particular, a very elevated desulfurization temperature (above 400-500 degrees C) does not provide decisive thermodynamic advantages. Therefore, the HGD unit optimization can be driven by technical and economical aspects and by emission abatement requirements. For instance, utilization of nitrogen for HGD sorbent regeneration (rather than for syngas dilution) and higher fuel temperature may improve the NO formation. Hence, different strategies to achieve acceptable NO(x) emissions (e.g. steam dilution) and their impact on the performance are investigated in the paper. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.