•Technology development must be aligned with key trends in decarbonization.•Costs reductions are needed. We rank options by value and feasibility.•Reduction in fuel cell component costs is essential to commercial success.•Fuel cell cost reductions are most important.•Innovations in systems design and materials can also reduce cost. Does generation of zero-carbon electricity from coal make sense for a decarbonized grid? Coal-based integrated gasification fuel cell systems with CO2 capture have the potential to participate in future decarbonized power grids. Over the next decade, such systems are scheduled to progress from a conceptual scheme to its first demonstration projects in China and Japan. A key issue in the long-term viability of the technology will be reducing costs so they are competitive against other forms of zero-carbon electricity; in addition, the systems must be able to operate as part of low carbon grids. We systematically evaluate the major on-going research directions, and rank them according to their economic potential, degree of technical challenge, and possible synergies with other efforts to transition to low-carbon energy systems worldwide. Our analysis indicates that the most promising pathway to making integrated gasification fuel cell technologies cost-competitive against other forms of low-carbon electricity is co-deployment of solid oxide fuel cell technologies in integrated gasification fuel cell cycle and distributed energy applications to expand the scale of production to a level that benefits both areas. Other avenues based on system optimization or improvements in fuel cell performance or degradation through materials development can help, but cannot by themselves deliver cost-competitive electricity absent an order of magnitude reduction in the cost of solid oxide fuel cell components.