# 5.4 Retirement Rules

Retirement is the process by which a credit's ownership state is finalised. This ensures that once the net tonne of CO₂e represented by the retired credit is applied to an accounting activity (e.g. offset or contribution to host country NDCs), it can never be used again by the owner, the beneficiary of the retirement, or any other party.

The beneficiary of a retirement is the organisation on whose behalf the credit was retired, this must be publicly identified. Beneficiaries can either be the current holder of the credit at the time of retirement or an organisation specified by the credit account holder during the retirement process. Credit account holders can retire credits by following the retirement procedure through their credit account on the registry.

The owner of an unretired credit may publicly market its ownership, as well as the potential for the credit to be retired by any current or future owners. However, only the beneficiary of a retired credit can claim the environmental benefits associated with that credit.

Retirement is governed by the following rules:

* A credit account holder can only retire credits they own, which are in their credit account.
* A credit can only be retired once. 
* Any number of credits can be retired at any given time, provided the total does not exceed the number of credits held by the credit account.


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