VC&E evolved from two companies. Earth Resource Management (ERM) and Johansing Environmental Technologies (JET). ERM was created in 1990 by architect Harry Gesner and P.G "Gere" Johansing, Jr. to market the Madisonville Waste Recovery (MWR) technology, arguably the world's most advanced municipal solid waste (MSW) and sewage sludge (biosolids) composting process. The showcase MWR plant designed by Gesner was built in 1980 on landscaped grounds next door to a regional park and across the street from a shopping mall in Madisonville, Kentucky. The 150-ton per day MSW and sewage sludge disposal plant operated for three years until shut down due to lack of waste supplied by the City and not being able to develop a profitable market for composted MSW. Surprisingly, there were never any complaints of odors, pests or any other nuisances from the public recreating and shopped next door.

Real Earth, Inc. built and operated MWR starting in 1980 and continued to try to reopen it after being forced to close in 1983 until they were finally forced into involuntary bankruptcy before it was sold. One of the observations made by ERM when inspecting the shut-down MWR plant before it was sold was that dried compost produced at MWR resembled pulverized refuse-derived-fuel (RDF). It did not look like composted soil amendment except it had a pleasant earthy smell. It contained many small particles of plastic, rounded glass and other visible waste that would not have been appropriate for a garden or a farmer's field. However, being made of mainly dry carbon materials including plastic waste, it was an obvious source of energy.

ERM discerned that the advanced version of the Naturizer Process applied at MWR accomplished something that typical RDF processes don't. Composting applied at MWR rapidly processes MSW with sewage sludge by microbially eliminating simple sugars that are not good fuel because of their oxygen content. The heat that is produced pasteurizes and dries. The result is to produce a superior and more energy-dense RDF that unlike typical RDF has a uniform and much smaller particle size composition. ERM realized this was the best market for the MWR product and began in 1990 to seek a new market for oxygen-depleted, higher-energy density and more homogenous aerobically-enhanced RDF (AE-RDF).

In 1991, ERM contacted Texaco (now Chevron Texaco) that had built a 120 megawatt (MW) coal-fired power at the Cool Water Ranch plant in Daggett, near Barstow, California called the Cool Water Gasification Plant. Texaco used a pressurized entrained slagging gasifier of their design that processed micron-sized coal and water slurry as fuel. Texaco was interested in ERM's approach of combining both biosolids and MSW to produce syngas and electricity. They understood AE-RDF was a much more energy dense fuel than disposed biosolids they were trying to gasify at that time with coal. Texaco began to realize they could obtain much greater income disposing MSW produced by the Mojave High-Desert communities. However, unable to agree on a power contract with Southern California Edison, the local utility, Texaco finally chose to move the gasifier to the Midwest (just a few years before the famous California Energy Crisis). At that time Gesner and Johansing were unable to identify any other environmentally appropriate energy processes where there was a similar opportunity to introduce AE-RDF and had to wrap-up ERM.

Johansing Environmental Technologies (JET) was created in 1994 when Johansing met Randy Kure, then owner of a growing mechanical construction company that has since become American Industrial Services, Escondido, California. Kure agreed to support Johansing in developing a solution for disposing halogenated hydrocarbon solvents such as chlorofluorocarbon refrigerants banned for use by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Johansing described his background working on development of a process for transforming MSW into fuel. He also explained his other accomplishments leading to three US patents (see Johansing patents). By 1998 JET had developed and filed several patents on the CATCHER Process (see CATCHER patents).

By chance JET met with representatives of the Army Chemical Agent Munitions Disposal System (CAMDS). They were developing a process to demilitarize chemical agent protection suits (DPE personnel protection suits) made of chlorinated polyethylene. The CATCHER Process was demonstrated under contract to the US Army as a feasible solution for the demilitarization of hazardous waste generated by the destruction of military chemical weapons.

The CATCHER Process was also selected by the US-Israel Science & Technology Foundation as the best solution for disposal or bromine hydrocarbon waste generated by Dead Sea Bromine Group (DSBG) and stored at the Israeli National Hazardous Waste Facility at Ramat Hovav. However, JET did not succeed in commercializing the CATCHER Process through any of these activities that first required raising the capital or teaming with a much larger company to carry out the engineering and testing required for commercialization. Instead, JET pushed ahead becoming Ventless Combustion & Energy Corporation (VC&E) by focusing on an adaptation of the CATCHER Process for disposal of sewage sludge. This appeared to be an easier to reach target than disposal of MSW.

By the end of 2004 VC&E had begun development of the Ventless Combustion System (VCS) and the CATCHER Process had been replaced by the Slagging Gasification Module (SGM) first developed by TRW (Northrop Grumman ) and the US Department of Energy Clean Coal Program. Gesner and Johansing teamed up and again in 2007 when an architect associate of Gesner's wanted to help his home town in Argentina solve serious problems erupting into violence over the disposal of imported MSW. One of the difficulties of slagging gasification was that it could not efficiently be used to gasify soft feedstocks such as AE-RDF.

At the same time VC&E discovered biochar and the creation of Terra Preta that offers a practical solution for significantly reducing the world's escalating anthropogenic (man-caused) production of greenhouse gas and consequentially dangerous global warming.

Finally, in 2008 VC&E began working with the developer of an advanced catalytic Fischer Tropsch (FT) reactor system able to produce synthetic diesel (syndiesel) and synthetic natural gas (SNG) from syngas. VC&E visited a pilot plant in Central China in September 2008 that was producing syndiesel from coal-derived syngas in the same way that 40% of all the transportation fuels used in South Africa are produced mainly by SASOL. The outcome for VC&E was to identify suppliers of technology that could be integrated with proprietary technology invented and developed by VC&E.