The invention belongs to the field of control technologies, and provides an energy control method and device for a hybrid electric vehicle. The method includes the steps that required power Preq(k+j) of a driver in the [k, k+p] time period is predicted, j equals 0, 1, ..., p, and k represents the current sampling time; required torque Treq(k+j) and the vehicle speed v(k+j) of the hybrid electric vehicle in the [k, k+p] time period are obtained; through nerve cell dynamic planning, the optimal control vector [u(k), ..., (k+p-1)] is calculated; and a control variable sequence u(k) of the current sampling time is output. According to the method and device, energy management control of the hybrid electric vehicle is achieved on the basis of random model prediction control and a nerve cell dynamic planning algorithm, and on the premise of guaranteeing the vehicle dynamic quality, the fuel economy of the vehicle can be improved; the calculated quantity is small, the real-time performance is good, and the fuel economy of the hybrid electric vehicle can be further improved.