In developing countries like India, about 70% of the population is engaged in the production of milk, fruits and vegetables. Due to the lack of proper storage and transit facilities, the agricultural produce, in remote areas loses its value. This spoilage could be prevented at the local village level, by providing cooling units for short term preservation. In this paper, the possibility of a hybrid energy based thermally operated cold storage has been considered to meet the cooling needs of the villages in the southern parts of India, where biomass, biogas and gobar gas are available in abundance. A milk cooling system that uses various combinations of locally available renewable energy sources to operate an aqua ammonia vapour absorption cooling system has been analysed using the Matlab software. The impact of various combinations of renewable energy sources on the Coefficient of Performance (COP), Net Present Value (NPV) and payback period of the total cooling system has been studied. The analysis shows that the COP and payback period of the proposed hybrid renewable energy based milk cooling system are 0.16-0.23 and 4-6 years respectively. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.