Improvement in the energy efficiency has been studied of the desiccant cooling system by applying a vapor compression type heat pump to modify the system into a hybrid system. The cycle simulation was performed and the results were compared between a reference desiccant cooling system composed of a desiccant rotor, a sensible rotor and a regenerative evaporative cooler, and a hybrid desiccant cooling system with the sensible rotor being replaced by a heat pump. Though the electric consumption increases as much as the compressor power consumption, the total cooling capacity increases and the thermal energy input decreases by the addition of the heat pump. Therefore, the total energy efficiency can be improved if the increase in the electric consumption can be compensated with the increase in the cooling capacity and the decrease in the thermal energy input. The results showed that the total energy efficiency is optimized at a certain heat pump capacity. When the heat from the CHP plant is used for the thermal energy input, the energy consumption of the hybrid system is reduced by 20~30% compared with the reference system when the heat pump shares 30~40% of the total cooling capacity.