Global climate change is coming, and its coming soon, the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned today.

If the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is to be kept below 450 parts per million, a threshold that has been widely viewed as necessary in order to maintain an increase of only 2 degrees Celsius, a larger amount of renewables need to be incorporated into the electrical grid.

The answer may be geothermal power, says this newly released IEA report.

In fact, the report maintains that geothermal energy can account for approximately 3.5% of annual global electricity production and 3.9% of energy for heat by 2050.

This would be an important contribution to global efforts to reduce carbon emissions, using a sustainable and reliable source of energy that is available all over the world and does not fluctuate with the weather or season, said IEA Executive Director Nobuo Tanaka in releasing the report.

Beyond the technological innovation that may be required to extract geothermal energy, this report also focuses on the political and regulatory incentives and programs that may be required to boost global production of this heat and power energy source.