What is the difference between retiring and cancelling a CCTS carbon credit?

A credit in an ICM registry account is active, retired or cancelled. Retiring is what the holder does to use a credit for a claim, and it removes the credit for good. Cancellation is a permanent removal made by BEE for its own stated reasons, not a claim.

The three statuses

• Active: verified, issued and available to trade or use.
• Retired: permanently removed from circulation in the ICM registry because the holder used it in a claim. It cannot be sold, traded or used again.
• Cancelled: permanently removed by BEE, the administrator, for reasons it specifies.

Who acts

Retirements are started by the account holder through the ICM portal. Cancellations are BEE's decision.

For a voluntary claim

Only a retired credit backs a claim. Keep the retirement record from the registry with your report, and do not count the same tonnes again in your own inventory.

What Senseible does here

Senseible tracks your own emissions from invoices and keeps any credit retirement you record separate from them, so the two are never netted silently.

• Buying CCTS credits voluntarily
• Can a GHG report subtract offsets
• Who runs the carbon market registry

Sources: BEE, Detailed Procedure for Offset Mechanism under CCTS, Version 1.0 (effective 27 March 2025)

Last reviewed 2026-10-23. Section A9 of the scanned procedure, read on 23 October 2026.