The project produced a logo, but fell behind schedule and failed to deliver a new website
The Department of Energy canceled a $4.5 million contract the Biden administration awarded to develop a new agency website and logo symbolically highlighting the green energy transition, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.
Former president Joe Biden’s Department of Energy awarded the contract to the Native American firm Cherokee Nation Strategic Programs—which is classified as a minority-owned small business—in March 2023 for the stated purpose of “rebranding” the agency, according to internal documents and records reviewed by the Free Beacon. The project, however, fell far behind schedule—by late 2024, the firm only delivered a logo and failed to make progress on the website redesign.
The Biden administration ultimately paid out about $2.3 million, or half, of the contract to Cherokee Nation Strategic Programs and transferred the rest of the contract to a separate IT services firm, a Department of Energy official told the Free Beacon. Energy Department officials discovered the contract in coordination with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency and acted to cancel it in March.
As for the million-dollar logo, it features the words “U.S. Department of Energy” with “Energy” in a larger font. According to the internal documents, most letters are dark blue to signify electric currents. The second “E” in “Energy,” though, is comprised of three colors: light blue to signify wind power and hydropower generated by the water and the sky, yellow to signify solar power, and green to signify geothermal energy, biofuels, nuclear power, and “legacy” energy sources.
While the contract represents just a tiny slice of the Department of Energy’s roughly $50 billion budget, it encapsulates the priorities of the Biden administration. Led by then-energy secretary Jennifer Granholm, Biden’s Energy Department pursued an aggressive climate agenda and prioritized green energy over traditional forms of energy like oil, gas, and coal. Granholm described herself as “obsessed with solving climate change and creating good-paying clean energy jobs.”
“The new DOE logo comprises multiple unique design elements, each representing a critical aspect of how we deliver on our mission,” an internal Biden-era agency brand guidelines document states. “As a unit, the logo places the greatest emphasis on ‘energy,’ the same way DOE as an agency focuses on the many ways energy can serve and protect the American public and the world.”
According to archived copies of the Department of Energy’s website, the agency adopted the new logo on Nov. 24, 2024. Then in February, less than two months later and under the leadership of Secretary Chris Wright, the agency scrapped the logo and reverted back to its former seal, which features the head of a bald eagle and a crest with symbols representing the sun, an atom, an oil drilling rig, an old-fashioned windmill, and electrical generator.
Federal spending records show Cherokee Nation Strategic Programs outsourced the project to two subcontractors. The first subcontractor, staffing firm Insight Global, received $90,469 to hire a user experience designer, training specialist, and developer. And the second subcontractor, advertising agency Lempugh, Inc., received nearly $2 million to oversee the rebranding.
The decision to cancel the contract is also the latest example of how the agency and the administration more broadly have sought to streamline government operations and cut spending deemed to be wasteful. Earlier this year, the Department of Energy canceled two million-dollar green energy grants the Biden administration awarded to the Rocky Mountain Institute, a left-wing climate think tank that has pushed for heavy restrictions on gas stoves and that has collaborated with the Chinese government.
