The USGBC advocacy agenda for 2012 includes an aggressive campaign for better, greener building codes that enable a market transformation toward a new norm of “healthy, low-impact, responsible, and efficient buildings and neighborhoods,” writes Matt Pearce, campaign specialist for Build Better Codes in a blog published March 23 on the USGBC website.

The mission of USGBC—to end the negative impact of buildings on the people that occupy them and the environment that surrounds them—has a fundamental kinship with building codes, which strive for the same goals, albeit not to the same extent.

Over the course of the last six years, green building policy experts from all sectors of the industry have created a national set of “model” green building codes, providing a “first-ever common language for minimum green commercial building practice,” according to a USGBC campaign brief . The 2012 version of the International Green Construction Code (IgCC) was released the last week of March.

In his blog, Pearce calls on the full community of green building professionals to coach these codes from idea into reality. To assist local jurisdictions considering the IgCC, the campaign offers several resources, including fill-in-the-blank, draft legislative text .