Abstract The dynamic environmental economic dispatch (DEED) model is presented in this paper, in which the fuel cost and emission effect over a certain period of time are optimized as conflicting objectives. It is a high dimensional, nonlinear constrained multiobjective optimization problem when generators’ valve point effect, ramp rate limits and power load variation are considered. This paper proposes a modified adaptive multiobjective differential evolution (MAMODE) algorithm to solve the problem. In MAMODE, expanded double selection and adaptive random restart operators are proposed to modify the evolutionary processes for avoiding premature and a dynamic heuristic constraint handling (DHCH) approach is introduced to deal with the complicated constraints. The DHCH can lessen infeasible solutions gradually. To illustrate the effectiveness of the method, four cases based on three test power systems are studied. The simulation result indicates that the DEED can be solved quickly. Comparison of numerical results demonstrates the proposed method has higher performance.