Zero point energy and free energy are completely different things. Zero point energy is the energy of the ground state of a system, but since you really can only talk about energy differences its difficult to see at the moment (in science) how it will be useful. They have measured it though if I remember correctly. Free energy on the other hand is just a mathematical concept that adds in an entropy term to the energy (it takes into account the disorder of the system).

What do you think the laws of thermodynamics say though. You told me what you think the consequences are but what's your line of reasoning?