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

Canonical: https://senseible.earth/answers/ccts-offset-retire-vs-cancel-credits

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](https://senseible.earth/answers/can-a-company-buy-ccts-credits-voluntarily)
- [Can a GHG report subtract offsets](https://senseible.earth/answers/can-a-ghg-report-subtract-carbon-offsets)
- [Who runs the carbon market registry](https://senseible.earth/answers/who-runs-india-carbon-market-registry)

Sources: [BEE, Detailed Procedure for Offset Mechanism under CCTS, Version 1.0 (effective 27 March 2025)](https://beeindia.gov.in/WriteReadData/RTF1984/RTF-PDF-dd26de202535b101_1776055896.pdf)

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