In this paper we discuss local averages of the energy density for the non-minimally coupled scalar quantum field, extending a previous investigation of the classical field. By an explicit example, we show that such averages are unbounded from below o
n the class of Hadamard states. This contrasts with the minimally coupled field, which obeys a state-independent lower bound known as a Quantum Energy Inequality (QEI). Nonetheless, we derive a generalised QEI for the non-minimally coupled scalar field, in which the lower bound is permitted to be state-dependent. This result applies to general globally hyperbolic curved spacetimes for coupling constants in the range $0<xileq 1/4$. We analyse the state-dependence of our QEI in four-dimensional Minkowski space and show that it is a nontrivial restriction on the averaged energy density in the sense that the lower bound is of lower order, in energetic terms, than the averaged energy density itself.
