There are already a bunch of Zigbee energy harvesting switches on the market that work well. There's the Hue Tap that I mentioned, plus other commenters have pointed out other ones.

If you replace the "one or two RF power transmitters to power up all switches inside the house" with a Zigbee gateway you've got a packaged solution that you can buy right now.

The rest of the article talks about sensors, "seamless automation", etc and feels like future thinking (i.e., they don't have a solution here but they're working on it), but also feels like more already-solved problems.

For example, lighting driven by occupancy is something you can easily do by adding a Zigbee motion sensor to the system.

HVAC zoning is also a thing, but a lot more complicated as it requires dampers and needs to be designed as a complete system. You can't simply open the dampers for just the occupied rooms, you have to keep in mind that the furnace needs to maintain a minimum amount of airflow so that it doesn't overheat. You could also go with a mini-split heat-pump system where each major room (e.g., bedrooms and living rooms) will basically have its own HVAC system. I doubt that the costs of a zoned HVAC system would ever pay for itself in energy savings vs, e.g., an Ecobee thermostat plus sensors (another off-the-shelf solution that you can buy right now).