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The Energy Star logo tended to be made up of custom characters in text mode.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAHGKanqO6s

Later versions used true bitmaps, though.

http://fileformats.archiveteam.org/wiki/Award_BIOS_logo

It's not a graphics mode. It is just a resolution from the graphics mode, repurposed for the text mode. The reason possibly being the 640x480 resolution is universally supported while 720x400 is not - for example my HDMI TV can still display 640x480.

CRTs were still commonplace though based on the bios dates in the blog. So 720x400 would still have been well supported. It’s strange that they did this!

Unlike CRT screens, LCD ones from that time had usually a fixed resolution and wouldn't resize the image on the fly.

This apparently was a text mode not a graphics mode. It would have been a tweaked text mode since the standard mode 3 text mode that you can set via int 10h is 720x400.

The energy star logo was also displayed in text modes - by using custom font glyphs!