We define and compute the energy of higher curvature gravity theories in
arbitrary dimensions. Generically, these theories admit constant curvature
vacua (even in the absence of an explicit cosmological constant), and
asymptotically constant curvature solutions with non-trivial energy properties.
For concreteness, we study quadratic curvature models in detail. Among them,
the one whose action is the square of the traceless Ricci tensor always has
zero energy, unlike conformal (Weyl) gravity. We also study the string-inspired
Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet model and show that both its flat and Anti-de-Sitter
vacua are stable.Comment: 18 pages, typos corrected, one footnote added, to appear in Phys.
Rev.
