Abstract With the stricter emission regulation taking effect, most of circulating fluidized bed (CFB) power generation units operates with conventional desulfurization in CFB furnace and flue gas desulfurization (FGD) technology to meet the requirements of ultralow SO 2 emission. Therefore, it is urgent to analyse operating cost of the combined desulfurization system and explore the low-cost operating mode for CFB units. In this paper, the operating cost model of combined desulfurization system was established, in which the influence of desulfurization in furnace on thermal efficiency of the CFB boiler was considered. Then, the operating cost of combined desulfurization system under different load conditions for a 300MW subcritical CFB unit was analysed, combined with measured data. The operating cost optimization result shows that, under different loads, when Ca/S is in the range of 0.4 to 0.5, the operating cost of combined desulfurization system reaches the minimum. In addition, as the unit load increases, the higher proportion of SO 2 removal in FGD is required to achieve low-cost operating mode for CFB units.