The UK government has a requirement that all new homes will be carbon neutral by 2016, so I imagine there will be some money appearing for research in this area.

There are a couple of caveats:

1) You can build homes which have worse energy efficiency than the requirements if you offset it somehow, e.g. by improving existing homes.

2) The definition of 'carbon-neutral' has been diluted for these regulations. For instance, it doesn't include appliances that you plug in.