At the Calhoun solar park in Michigan, minimum-wage workers decide whether to sleep in their cars or pile into crowded hotel rooms as they build one of the state’s largest solar projects. In Karnataka, India, landowners weigh whether to lease their land to solar farms for rock-bottom prices or risk the crop-destroying odds of drought made more likely by climate change.

At opposite ends of the globe, both groups’ hard decisions have one thing in common: they’re tied to the coffers of Canadian pension funds.

Canada’s pension funds are some of the world’s largest and most powerful pools of institutionally owned finance — the eight largest of these funds collectively manage around $2 trillion. The biggest, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), manages over half a trillion dollars alone.