Unless the context clearly requires otherwise, the definitions in this section apply throughout this chapter.

(1) "Biomass energy system" means a system that provides for the production or collection of organic materials such as wood and agricultural residues and municipal solid waste that are primarily organic materials and the conversion or use of that material for the production of heat or substitute fuels through several processes including, but not limited to, burning, pyrolysis, or anaerobic digestion.

(2) "Cogeneration" means the sequential generation of two or more forms of energy from a common fuel or energy source.

(3) "Cogeneration facility" means any machinery, equipment, structure, process, or property or any part thereof, installed or acquired for the primary purpose of cogeneration by a person or corporation.

(4) "Geothermal heat" means the natural thermal energy of the earth.

(5) "Waste heat" means the thermal energy which otherwise would be released to the environment from an industrial process, electric generation, or other process.

(6) "Heat" means thermal energy.

(7) "Heat source" includes but is not limited to (a) any integral part of a heat production or heat rejection system of an industrial facility, cogeneration facility, or electric power generation facility, (b) geothermal well or spring, (c) biomass energy system, (d) solar collection facility, and (e) hydrothermal resource or heat extraction process.

(8) "Municipality" means a county, city, town, irrigation district which distributes electricity, water-sewer district, port district, or metropolitan municipal corporation.

(9) "Heating facilities or heating systems" means all real and personal property, or interests therein, necessary or useful for: (a) The acquisition, production, or extraction of heat; (b) the storage of heat; (c) the distribution of heat from its source to the place of utilization; (d) the extraction of heat at the place of utilization from the medium by which the heat is distributed; (e) the distribution of heat at the place of utilization; and (f) the conservation of heat.

(10) "Hydrothermal resource" means the thermal energy available in wastewater, sewage effluent, wells, or other water sources, natural or man-made.

Part headings not law—1999 c 153: See note following RCW 57.04.050.