Energy might not be the right word, as I believe energy is a subset of these concepts but not the totality. The right word is something like causal relationship

Energy might not be the right word, as I believe energy is a subset of these concepts but not the totality. The right word is something like causal relationships. The idea is that stable loops create higher-order behaviour; this works at all levels of abstraction, whereas the "energy" model is generally only used to describe interaction at the atomic and subatomic levels. This idea is taken primarily from cybernetics, but it also pops up in other places because it's a transdisciplinary concept. In fact, cybernetics and systems theory were specifically created out of observations of common patterns that appear across disciplines, and created by transdisciplinary teams of academics from both the humanities and the sciences/mathematics.