Caption: A pie chart showing the calculated distribution of the observable universe mass-energy. Features:
There is no consensus theory of what it is.
In the concordance model, the dark energy is gives rise to the cosmological constant.
Really dark energy may be more complex than than a simple cosmological constant.
It may give rise to an effectively non-constant cosmological constant---in which case we should call the cosmological constant something else: e.g., the cosmological parameter.