About 20-30 years ago, scientific community was interested in knowing whether dark matter can carry gauge charges. The answer was found to be - no. Today, we can ask a similar question: Can dark energy carry gauge charges? The answer this time seems to be - yes.

We study the possibility that the current accelerated expansion of the universe is driven by the vacuum energy density of a colored scalar field which is responsible for a phase transition in which the gauge SU(3)_c symmetry breaks. If we are stuck in a SU(3)_c - preserving false vacuum, then SU(3)_c symmetry breaking can be accommodated without violating any experimental QCD bounds or bounds from cosmological observations. As a bonus, the model can likely be tested at the LHC. A possible consequence of the model is the existence of fractionally charged massive hadrons. The model can be embedded in supersymmetric theories where massive colored scalar fields appear naturally.