The use of renewable energy, including solar process heating, and of efficient energy conversion
technologies, have been considered in the literature to improve the energy performance of cheese
production. However, most of the studies consider one energy source at time, or hardly account for the
carbon emission impact of different energy supply alternatives. In this paper, a mixed integer linear
programming model is developed and applied to a reference cheese factory in Italy to identify the least cost
mix of solar process heating and natural gas-based trigeneration which allows to achieve assigned carbon
emission reduction goals. It is found that, at current economic conditions, fossil fuel based trigeneration is
economically attractive but does not contribute to decarbonization, whereas a combination of cogeneration
and solar heating enables a good balance between economic savings and environmental constraints.
