YoujiVest at CAERE 2026: AI, Climate Risk, and the Green Economy

The 5th CAERE Annual Conference and Frontiers Forum on Environmental Economics and Policy took place in Nanjing on May 30–31, hosted by Nanjing University of Finance and Economics with the Center for Environmental Management and Policy Research at Nanjing University. More than three hundred scholars attended, from Tsinghua, Peking University, HKUST, Stanford, MIT, Duke, and other institutions, for two days on environmental, resource, ecological, and climate economics.

YoujiVest attended as an invited climate risk and ESG data analytics company, delivered a keynote at the closing session, and engaged with participating scholars on AI-enabled climate risk management, ESG data governance, and financial applications.

Opening remarks came from Prof. Zhang Bing, Vice President of Nanjing University of Finance and Economics, and Prof. Wu Junjie, CAERE President and Head of Agricultural and Resource Economics at North Carolina State University.

Keynotes came from Prof. Catherine Wolfram (MIT) and Prof. Wang Shaoda (University of Chicago), addressing the global effects of the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) and the economics of cloud seeding as climate engineering. A subsequent roundtable brought together faculty from UC San Diego, UC Berkeley, Stanford, Mannheim, and Duke Kunshan to examine how AI and big data are reshaping environmental economics research and to advise early-career scholars.

The program included more than twenty parallel forums organized around six areas: carbon markets and climate policy, energy transition, ESG and finance, AI and environmental governance, health and development, and biodiversity and natural resources. Nearly one hundred papers were presented by researchers from institutions across the globe.

At the closing session, YoujiVest Co-founder and CTO Bi Cheng delivered the keynote Climate Risk Analysis Applications in the AI Era, walking the audience through the company’s technical stack and product architecture across climate risk and ESG data analytics.

YoujiCRMS (YoujiVest Climate Risk Modeling System):

• Multi-source data fusion drawing on nearly 200 years of global disaster records, high-resolution geographic data, and real-time meteorological observations

• Climate risk modeling built on deep learning and Monte Carlo simulation

• Asset-level risk analysis at 5m × 5m spatial resolution

• Sub-second response for real-time risk assessment and dynamic decisioning

• Core functionality across loss estimation, exposure analysis, and multi-scenario simulation

Differentiation from traditional catastrophe models:

• Removes reliance on high-cost expert judgment and dedicated hardware

• Higher scalability and per-client customization

• Localized calibration for China market applications

• Materially better compute efficiency and unit economics

• Applicable to insurance pricing, asset management risk assessment, and corporate loss prevention

ESG and Carbon Data Products:

• Dynamic ESG risk scoring with continuously updated corporate risk profiles

• Full-scope carbon accounting across Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions

• Corporate pollutant emissions tracking based on monitoring data

• Quantitative assessment of biodiversity pressure and exposure risk

Data infrastructure:

• A traceable, analyzable, and reusable data foundation

• A path for corporates to move from reactive disclosure to active management

• Data-driven sustainability decision support for financial institutions and corporates

The keynote landed against the conference’s AI-enablement theme and drew engaged discussion from academics as well as practitioners across finance, insurance, and risk management, particularly on the technical advances in climate risk modeling and the operationalization of ESG data.

YoujiVest team members held working discussions with environmental and climate economics faculty from several universities, covering AI algorithms, disaster-chain modeling, and coupled climate-economy assessment, and mapping pathways from academic models to industry deployment.

This marked the third consecutive year YoujiVest has supported the CAERE Annual Conference. YoujiVest again sponsored the Best Paper Award, recognizing research that combines methodological innovation with applied relevance.

Longer-term commitments in academic-industry collaboration:

• High-resolution climate risk and ESG research data provided to universities and research institutions

• Support for research programs in climate risk quantification, ESG assessment, and carbon emissions modeling

• Ongoing joint research with leading domestic and international institutions using YoujiVest data and models

• Co-authored publications translating academic findings into applied outcomes

• Building durable data and use-case advantages in climate risk and ESG quantitative research

The team also exchanged views with participating faculty on rising market demand for talent in emerging fields such as carbon economics and climate analytics, and discussed potential collaboration on curriculum development, internship placements, and joint research.

The CAERE Annual Conference has become a key platform connecting academic work across China and abroad and bringing research closer to industry. What stood out this year was the rigor and international orientation of China’s environmental economics community.

YoujiVest will keep building in climate risk quantification and ESG data intelligence, working with academic and industry partners to turn frontier research into practical tools.