CSPOC has emerged from a 25 year history. In our early years, we were known as CMDC (The World Circle of Consensus). CMDC's goal was to put sustainable energy onto the global agenda. In 1989, we began to organise a historic series of international clean energy conferences, aimed at informing policy and debate. By 1992, our efforts had culminated in the Global Energy Charter for Sustainable Development, endorsed at the United Nations Summit on Environment and Development (commonly known as the 'Earth Summit).

We then created a coalition with other sustainable development organisations. As advisors on the United Nations Commission of Sustainable Development, we helped to create' the 'Blueprint of the Clean, Sustainable Energy Age', which in 1999, was issued at the World Summit of Sustainable Development in Johannesburg.

Through the research and academia of CMDC's founding members, we soon realised that environmental sustainability has many inputs. We sought to broaden our perspective, considering not only the environment, but its people, its organisations and its communities. In 2008, CSPOC was formed, which stands for the consensus of sustainable people, organisations and communities.