The 5th edition of WFES 2012 (16 – 19 January) will be held in Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre (ADNEC), United Arab Emirates. Hosted by Masdar, WFES promotes innovation and investment opportunities surrounding renewable energy and environment. This year WFES will bring together more than 150 eminent thought leaders to reveal the latest innovations and discuss the theme of the Powering Sustainable Innovation. CESI’s CEO, Matteo Codazzi, will participate as a speaker at the session on “Innovation in solar Technologies” and the CESI’s Director of Consulting, Solutions & Services Division (CSS), Gianluca Marini, will take part at the session entitled “Digital energy: Smart infrastructure”. But CESI will be a player of the game not only as an exhibitor but also as a new and competitive actor in the Middle Eastern market thanks to the next opening of its brand-new branch, CESI Middle East, in Dubai (U.A.E.). The CESI’s Consulting, Solutions and Services Division has analyzed in detail some foreign markets which could contribute in the achievement of its goals of growth. And the Middle East Area has shown elements of high attractiveness, considering the stable economic environment, the significant growth rates and the good opening towards new business initiatives. A deeper market analysis focalized on the CSS core activity, which is the technical consulting for Transmission, Distribution and RES power Generation, has shown very interesting market volumes. And a bottom up analysis has underlined that an even higher growth is expected on the topics in which CESI has strong competences: Smart Grid, Smart Metering, Studies for network interconnections and RES integration, Power Market studies… It is emerged that setting-up a local structure seems to be a prerequisite to facilitate the business development and compete with incumbent players .