The stress tensor is a basic local operator in any field theory; in the context of AdS/CFT, it is
the operator which is dual to the bulk geometry itself. Here we exploit this feature by using the
bulk geometry to place constraints on the local energy density in static states of holographic (2+ 1)-
dimensional CFTs living on a closed (but otherwise generally curved) spatial geometry. We allow
for the presence of a marginal scalar deformation, dual to a massless scalar field in the bulk. For
certain vacuum states in which the bulk geometry is well-behaved at zero temperature, we find that
the bulk equations of motion imply that the local energy density integrated over specific boundary
domains is negative. In the absence of scalar deformations, we use the inverse mean curvature flow
to show that if the CFT spatial geometry has spherical topology but non-constant curvature, the
local energy density must be positive somewhere. This result extends to other topologies, but only
for certain types of vacuum; in particular, for a generic toroidal boundary, the vacuum’s bulk dual
must be the zero-temperature limit of a toroidal black hole.