then, if we go further into, for example, offshore wind, yes, it is more expensive, but it is not prohibitively expensive. but again, the question is that we can tjust have the intermittent energy. we need the baseload and the flexibility also. also on this show, markus, because we ve been looking at the energy cost for businesses and households, especially in europe this winter. what s your take? will those bills be lower? last year was a very turbulent one. so, after the attack of russia to ukraine and the disruptions in the gas supplies, energy prices spiked up, the market was in huge turbulence. now, it s much calmer, so the forward prices are on completely different lower levels than they were last year. so, if nothing else happens and today s market prices prevail, then energy costs will be lower.
but the net that we have invested was $2 billion. so typically, these international investment protection treaty cases, they take a long time. so they may take many years in various courts. but we do expect that, at some point in time, we actually do get compensated but that can be far out in the future. in the last year, markus, we ve seen hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars promised to the industry by governments in europe and north america for the energy transition. i m wondering how that s going. there are certainly areas where subsidies may be needed for this transition to happen. in our core areas, in the nordics, the market is already well supplied with reliable and very cost competitive hydropower and nuclear power. so the basis for the transition is good. but markus, is it going fast enough? the renewables growth is actually happening at quite the fast pace.
yes, globally, further decisiveness is needed by the society, so we continuously, year after year, we need to push hard and make sure that the regulation and the market structures are in a place that will actually enable this transition to happen. of course, the criticism of renewable energy is that it s expensive and difficult to store, unlike gas or coal. and those critics, markus, they have a point, i m just wondering, how do you fix that? in many places, actually, renewables if you look atjust the cost of megawatt hour produced, actually it s very competitive. that s the case in the nordics, for wind especially. it is the case in sunny areas for solar. so you get low cost megawatt hours. but the problem is the intermittency, and the profile. so how do you deal with that issue? you need the flexibility, you need a system that will bring in also baseload into the system.
storage levels in europe now, actually, they are already over 90%. so, from the gas supply point of view, things look quite robust for this coming winter. but again, even with these gas storage levels, you can see that a little bit of bad news from any direction immediately impacts the closer gas prices. well, on that point, markus rauramo, the big boss of fortum, really appreciate your time, markus. thanks forjoining me, and i ll check in with you soon. thank you. well, that s it for this week s show! i hope you enjoyed it. don t forget, you can keep up with the latest on our global economy on the bbc website or smartphone app. of course, you can also follow me on x x me, i ll x you back! you can get me at @bbcaaron. thanks for watching, i ll see you soon. bye bye. hello, there.
than to exit russia. so, we started a divestment process, which is still going on. a couple of months back, actually, russia took over administrative control of our operations in russia, changed the ceo. and today, we have no access to information from the company, and we have no access to the cash flows. we don t get loan repayments from russia. and what happened after that is that we have written down, actually, our assets values in russia down to zero, and we have de consolidated the business. so from our point of view, that chapter is now behind us, and what we are doing today is we have started the processes under international investment protection treaties to claim our money back, and we continue the sales efforts as we still are the legal title holder to these assets. but we have no access to information or cash. and markus, we re talking about $2 billion can you ever get that money back? we actually invested even more