A good portion of greenhouse gas emissions is caused by the energy used in the built environment. Emission reduction goals may be achieved by combining cogeneration with fuel cells (PC). This paper investigates electricity production costs for PC based cogeneration systems with recent data for Swedish conditions. The types of FCs that are investigated are proton exchange membrane PC and molten carbonate FC. Based solely on cost, PC based cogeneration systems cannot compete with conventional systems. However, our results show that Molten Carbonate PC based cogeneration systems will be profitable by 2020. To compete with conventional systems, the capital cost, lifetime and efficiency of FCs must be improved. Creation of a reasonably broad market is essential since it will greatly help to reduce capital costs and operation and maintenance (O&M) costs, the dominating parts of the overall costs according to the analysis. Copyright (C) 2013, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.