Does energy need space to exist?

[Chriliman]

Does energy need space to exist?

If so then does that mean space can neither be created or destroyed?

 

[Strathos]

Well the initial singularity was supposedly infinitesimal in size, yet contained all of the energy in the universe.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Does energy need space to exist?

If so then does that mean space can neither be created or destroyed?

Energy is a property that 'stuff' has (where 'stuff' includes space), so I'd hazard a guess that it does. As I understand it, a universe can be created without using energy because the energy of space and the matter in is it exactly balanced/cancelled by the complementary (negative) energy of the gravity associated with it.

Space can certainly be created and destroyed. The space of our universe is expanding, and there are scenarios where it could, in principle, be destroyed, such as a 'big crunch' - although that is not expected to happen to our universe.

Energy is not conserved in the dynamic spacetime of General Relativity because energy conservation depends on spacetime not changing (time-translation invariance). For our short-lived purposes, local spacetime is static enough for conservation of energy to be a principle

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Well the initial singularity was supposedly infinitesimal in size, yet contained all of the energy in the universe.

It isn't clear if infinitesimal singularities are physically real - they're just where our physical models break down and are unable to describe what happens. My understanding is that the consensus of informed opinion is that when we have an applicable model (quantum gravity), we'll find that they're not infinitely small or infinitely dense.