One of our clients, PRS-ME, is the PR company for a building company called Future Green. They are opening Northern Irelands first zero carbon house on Friday 23rd March 2012 in Armagh. Here are a few links to it;
As far as I know for a house to be called zero carbon it must use no co2 or produce more energy than it uses.
By 2016 all new houses will need to meet the zero carbon specification, at least thats what it says on their website, but thats only 4 years and there are a lot of builders out there who havn't a clue, so it'll be interesting to see how it works out.
Anyway if anyone is near Armagh pop in and let us know what the place is like.