(1) As used in this section:

(a) “Eligible facility” means and includes a new facility that creates at least twenty (20) full-time jobs with a minimum capital investment from private sources of Fifty Million Dollars ($50,000,000.00), that:

(i) Consists of all components necessary for the production of electric energy from the direct firing or co-firing of biomass or waste heat recovery, and if applicable, other energy sources;

(ii) Produces both electric energy and useful thermal energy, such as heat or steam, through the sequential use of energy (cogeneration); and

(iii) Consists of all components necessary for the production of synfuel.

An eligible facility includes all burners and boilers, any handling and delivery equipment that supplies fuel directly to and is integrated with such burners and boilers, steam headers, turbines, generators, property used for the collection, processing or storage of biomass or synfuel, transformers, pipelines and all other property used in the transmission of electricity or synfuel and related depreciable property.

(b) “Biomass” means and includes any of the following:

(i) Forest-related mill residues, pulping by-product and other by-products of wood processing, thinnings, slash, limbs, bark, brush and other cellulosic plant material or nonmerchantable forest-related products;

(ii) Solid wood waste materials, including dunnage, manufacturing and construction wood wastes, demolition and storm debris and landscape or right-of-way trimmings;

(iii) Agriculture wastes, including orchard tree crops, vineyard, grain, legumes, sugar and other crop by-products or residues and livestock waste nutrients;

(iv) All plant and grass material that is grown exclusively as a fuel for the production of electricity;

(v) Refuse derived fuels consisting of organic components and fibers of waste water treatment solids; or

(vi) Whole trees.

(c) “Synfuel” means any liquid or gaseous fuel obtained from biomass.

(d) “Waste heat recovery” means systems that produce electricity from currently unused waste heat resulting from combustion or other processes and which do not use an additional combustion process. The term does not include any system whose primary purpose is the generation of electricity.

(2) An enterprise owning or operating an eligible facility is allowed an annual investment tax credit for taxes imposed by Section 27-7-5 equal to five percent (5%) of investments made by the enterprise in the initial establishment of an eligible facility. The credit shall commence on the date selected by the enterprise; provided, however, that the commencement date shall not be more than two (2) years from the date the eligible facility becomes fully operational.

(3) Any tax credit claimed under this section but not used in any taxable year may be carried forward for five (5) consecutive years from the close of the tax year in which the credits were earned. The credit that may be utilized in any one (1) tax year shall be limited to an amount not greater than fifty percent (50%) of the total state income tax liability of the enterprise for that year that is generated by, or arises out of, the eligible facility.