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The wind farm development is very slow in the developing countries particularly in the Middle East. This is attributed to many factors including economy of these countries which is mainly rely on fossil fuels and hence yields to low cost of energy, political and technological barriers, lack of wind potential studies or lack of high wind regions and more. This paper attempts to address these issues and foresees opportunities for developing household or small communities wind farms which can be rely on individual or small communities’ funds as well as creating job opportunities for them. As the case study, the province of Sistan-Baluchestan in Iran is considered to study how the economy of local communities or households can be strengthen by exploring small wind turbine developments for them. An economic and statistical analysis is conducted based on wind data for cities of Chabahar, Dehak, and Dalgan in the province. Wind energy characteristics and patterns are extensively explored for these cities from 473,040 wind data samples. This is resulted in the average annual wind power density of 181 W / m 2 , 158 W / m 2 , and 146 W / m 2 , for Chabahar, Dalgan, and Dehak, respectively at the height of 40 m. By considering five different commercial wind turbines, from 1.6 to 30 kW capacities, the total annual electrical power production, profits and payback time for each wind turbine is presented. It is concluded that nearly 90,000 households can benefit from profit of annual energy production of 225 GWh. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental and socioeconomic challenges facing many hydrocarbon-rich nations could help them evolve from hydrocarbon-based (black) into renewables-based (green) economies. In this paper, we present a case study for application of this Black Into Green (BIG) method for Iran. We show that with international cooperation Iran could indefinitely meet its energy and freshwater needs by leveraging large-scale renewable energy harvesting systems integrated with seawater pumped storage hydropower, reverse osmosis desalination, and enhanced distribution systems. This BIG transition could be facilitated by allocating a significant portion of Iran's potential hydrocarbon-based income to acquire, develop, and deploy renewable energy technology that utilizes Iran's immense solar and wind energy potential. Our analysis shows that developing just 1% of identified sites would provide over 30 TWh of annual renewable electricity generation and storage, and 221 million m 3 /day of renewably-powered desalination capacity to meet the freshwater needs of over 85% of its population. In addition to providing renewable energy design and manufacturing technology, the international community could also work with Iran to help evolve its nuclear power program toward small modular reactors for baseload power generation. Such an arrangement would contribute to regional and global security, and greatly reduce the Middle East's carbon emissions of which Iran is the largest emitter. Results from this holistic approach could then serve as a model for the world economy to work with other resource-rich nations to reduce their environmental impact while modernizing their economies and helping them achieve the socioeconomic goals outlined in the UN's Brundtland report. • Presents strategy for a sustainable economy to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic. • Case study for Iran with oil (black) exchanged for renewables (green). • Wind and solar energy with coastal pumped storage hydro and reverse osmosis. • 1% of viable sites could supply Iran with 10% of power and 45% of freshwater needs. • Distributed economic and environmental benefits meet UN sustainable development goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]