A hybrid algorithm for power system multi-area multi-fuel economic-emission dispatch, using a unified power flow controller (UPFC), is presented in this paper. The proposed algorithm is a combination of both integrated ant-lion optimiser (IALO) and grasshopper optimisation algorithm (GOA) called IALGOA. The integrated crossover and mutation techniques enhance the searching behaviour of ALO. The IALO approach is used to identify UPFC optimal location based on the objective function for the economic dispatch. Furthermore, the GOA approach is used to determine the UPFC optimal capacity based on its dependent parameters. Therefore, the proposed method can be easily applied to optimise the power system objectives while considering the operational constraints of the available generation resources, practical constraints and device limits. The proposed IALGOA technique is implemented using MATLAB/Simulink and the performance is tested with the IEEE standard 30-bus system. To evaluate the performance of the proposed IALGOA technique, it is compared with Existing techniques such as artificial bee colony-gravitational search algorithm and fire-fly-cuckoo search. The effectiveness of the proposed IALGOA technique is evaluated using the simulation results.