We study the energy issue in critical collapse. It is found that in critical collapse, the contribution from the material energy is greater than that from the gravitational energy. The quantity m/r plays an important role in identifying the formation of apparent horizon in gravitational collapse, where m is the Misner-Sharp mass and r the areal radius. We observe that in critical collapse, the maximum value of m/r fluctuates between 2/15 and 4/15. This denotes a large gap between critical collapse and black hole formation for which the criterion is m/r=1/2.