How do you retire credits?
Trace retires all carbon credits immediately after purchase to ensure they cannot be reused, resold, or double counted.
Retiring a carbon credit means permanently cancelling it in an official carbon registry so that it can never be claimed again by another party. Once a credit is retired, it is removed from circulation and cannot be transferred or sold.
Credits are retired in the appropriate registry for each project, including Gold Standard, Verra, and the Australian Clean Energy Regulator.
For credits issued under the Australian Clean Energy Regulator, retirement requires a registered account and banking license that Trace does not hold directly. In these cases, our procurement partner, Tasman Environmental Markets, retires the credits on our behalf and provides formal retirement certificates confirming the cancellation of the units.
This process is essential to maintaining environmental integrity. By retiring credits as soon as they are purchased, Trace ensures that each tonne of carbon accounted for in our portfolio represents a unique, permanent climate benefit and cannot be double counted by another organisation.
Details of credit retirements, including volumes and supporting documentation, are published in our public impact tracker to provide transparency and confidence in how customer contributions are used.