Dive summary:

• It is not hard to get agreement that building green – or sustainably or energy efficiently – is a goal that appears to have all-around benefits, but getting there is an unsettled question.
• During 2012, there have been many discussions and some disagreements about how "green" should be measured, including a dispute between backers of proposed revisions to the LEED standards and corporate interests that want a level playing field and defined rules akin to ISO or ANSI standards.
• There also has been controversy about the LEED scoring system being based on information about the extent to which the contents of building materials are harmful to humans, and the U.S. Green Building Council has a $3 million grant from Google to explore the information on which to base such claims.

From the article:

To aid designers, in March, the International Code Council released the 2012 International Green Construction Code. IgCC hopes the new code will provide more flexibility in high-performance building design than did earlier versions. ...