Energy Focus Wins Top Product of the Year Award from Environment + Energy Leader

EnFocus™ Honored for Many Advantages Including Energy Efficiency, System Affordability, Ease of Installation and Human-Centric Lighting Attributes

Presentation and Q&A to Be Held During Environment + Energy Leader Awards Summit on July 21

SOLON, Ohio, June 25, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Energy Focus, Inc. EFOI, a leader in advanced, sustainable LED lighting and lighting control technologies, won a Top Product of the Year award from Environment + Energy Leader for EnFocus™, its breakthrough lighting control platform that enables existing and new buildings to provide quality, convenient and affordable dimmable and color tunable Human-Centric Lighting (HCL).

The Environment + Energy Leader Awards is an elite program celebrating excellence in the world of environmental, sustainability and energy management. Companies that receive the awards are known to be the best of the best, with products vetted by experts. Energy Focus will participate in the Environment + Energy Leader Awards Summit on Tuesday, July 21, 2020 at 11:30 a.m. EDT and will share information about EnFocus™. To register for the presentation, please go to the following link:   

https://www.environmentalleader.com/environment-and-energy-leader-awards/

EnFocus™ was recognized for its many advantages over other lighting control systems, with judges citing value, improved lighting efficiency, ease of installation and overall management and product life extension as some of its outstanding attributes. Designed by "true engineers," judges noted EnFocus™ takes efficiency into account and may be applied on a small or large scale. 

"With rapid advancements and a near-constant rate of change in the field, sustainability and energy professionals had to prove to our judges that they were really the best of the best this year," says Sarah Roberts, Environment + Energy Leader publisher. 

One judge commented, "The ability to add lighting controls and changes in color by using existing wiring to enhance the space is a unique way to reduce equipment costs and labor while being able to set up ‘cool' systems that may have future applications to external buildings in addition to their inside systems. This use of existing wiring as communications is unique to lighting retrofits."

James Tu, Chairman and CEO of Energy Focus said, "With our vision to be the most trusted LED lighting brand with customer-centric innovations, we are deeply honored to be recognized by Environment + Energy. We believe LED lighting is entering the age of HCL, offering not only significant energy efficiency, but also expanding triple-bottom-line benefits. In designing the EnFocus™ platform, our product development and engineering teams listened to our customers and focused on resolving their pain points, such as system complexity and prohibitive cost, when retrofitting with controlled lighting using other products."

EnFocus™ brings circadian lighting capabilities with a lamp-based solution that leverages existing power lines for digital communications, thereby dramatically reducing the cost and time required for installation and maintenance, as well as minimizing lifecycle carbon footprint of controlled lighting systems. Through EnFocus™ – for the first time – not just the most high-end new buildings, but also literally all existing educational, healthcare, commercial and industrial facilities across the world can have access to and reap the benefits of HCL, achieving optimal occupant comfort, learning and productivity.

About the Environment + Energy Leader Awards
For nearly a decade, the Environment + Energy Leader Awards have celebrated excellence in the world of environmental, sustainability and energy management. Award winners are truly buzz-worthy, and companies that sport a Top Project or Top Product of the Year Award badge are known to be the best of the best. When other companies are seeking a sustainability or energy management solution, they know that E+E Product of the Year Award winners offer a significant group of products, vetted by experts, to peruse for help in making their decisions. Project of the Year Award winners are known to illustrate how sustainability and energy management projects can successfully help other companies improve the bottom line.

About the Environment + Energy Leader Awards Summit
During the one-day E+E Awards Summit, Environment + Energy Leader will announce the complete list of Top Product and Top Project of the Year Award winners, recognize and thank its panel of industry experts who evaluated and scored entries, and announce and chat with the two Judges' Choice Award winners. Participating winners will then take the podium to share details about their Product or Project of the Year Award win. To register, or for more details, visit https://www.environmentalleader.com/environment-and-energy-leader-awards/.

About Energy Focus:
Energy Focus is an industry-leading innovator of sustainable LED lighting and lighting control technologies. As the creator of the first flicker-free LED products on the U.S. market, Energy Focus products provide extensive energy and maintenance savings, and aesthetics, safety, health and sustainability benefits over conventional lighting. Our patent-pending EnFocus™ lighting control platform enables existing and new buildings to provide quality, convenient and affordable dimmable and color tunable Human-Centric Lighting (HCL). Our customers include U.S. and foreign navies, U.S. federal, state and local governments, healthcare and educational institutions, as well as Fortune 500 companies.

Since 2007, Energy Focus has installed approximately 900,000 lighting products across U.S. Navy fleet, including TLEDs, waterline security lights, explosion-proof globes and berth lights, saving more than five million gallons of fuel and 300,000 man-hours in lighting maintenance annually. Energy Focus is headquartered in Solon, Ohio. For more information, visit our website at www.energyfocus.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

Forward-looking statements in this release and the presentations and information linked to in this release are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Generally, these statements can be identified by the use of words such as "believes," "estimates," "anticipates," "expects," "seeks," "projects," "intends," "plans," "may," "will," "should," "could," "would" and similar expressions intended to identify forward-looking statements, although not all forward-looking statements contain these identifying words. These forward-looking statements include all matters that are not historical facts and include statements regarding our current expectations concerning, among other things, the performance and efficiency of our EnFocus™ LED lighting Control Platform compared to other products and future development of our EnFocus™ LED Lighting Control Platform as well as the impact of our products on efficiency and employee well-being. By their nature, forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties because they relate to events and depend on circumstances that may or may not occur in the future. Although we base these forward-looking statements on assumptions that we believe are reasonable when made, we caution you that forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and that our actual results of operations, financial condition and liquidity, and industry developments may differ materially from statements made in or suggested by the forward-looking statements contained in this release and the presentations and information linked to in this release. We believe that important factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to: (i) disruptions in the U.S. and global economy and business interruptions resulting from the recent coronavirus ("COVID-19") health pandemic outbreak and related stay-at-home orders, quarantine policies and restrictions on travel, trade and business operations; (ii) our need for additional financing in the near term to continue our operations; (iii) our liquidity and refinancing demands; (iv) our ability to obtain refinancing or extend maturing debt; (v) our ability to continue as a going concern for a reasonable period of time; (vi) our ability to implement plans to increase sales and control expenses; (vii) our reliance on a limited number of customers for a significant portion of our revenue, and our ability to maintain or grow such sales levels; (viii) our ability to increase sales by adding new customers to reduce the reliance of our sales on a smaller group of customers, and the long sales-cycle that our product requires; (ix) our ability to increase demand in our targeted markets and to manage sales cycles that are difficult to predict and may span several quarters; (x) the timing of large customer orders, significant expenses and fluctuations between demand and capacity as we invest in growth opportunities; (xi) our ability to compete effectively against companies with lower cost structures or greater resources, or more rapid development efforts, and new competitors in our target markets; (xii) our ability to successfully scale our network of sales representatives, agents, and distributors to match the sales reach of larger, established competitors;(xiii) market acceptance of LED lighting technologies and products; (xiv) our ability to attract and retain qualified personnel, and to do so in a timely manner; (xv) the impact of any type of legal inquiry, claim, or dispute; (xvi) general economic conditions in the United States and in other markets in which we operate or secure products; (xvii) our dependence on military maritime customers and on the levels of government funding available to such customers, as well as the funding resources of our other customers in the public sector and commercial markets; (xviii) the possible impact on our military maritime customers and their ability to honor the timing for existing orders or place future orders due to COVID-19 breakouts amongst personnel that might impact the use of ships in service; (xix) business interruptions resulting from geopolitical actions, including war and terrorism, natural disasters, including earthquakes, typhoons, floods and fires or from health epidemics or pandemics or other contagious outbreaks; (xx) our reliance on a limited number of third-party suppliers, our ability to obtain critical components and finished products from such suppliers on acceptable terms, and the impact of our fluctuating demand on the stability of such suppliers; (xxi) our ability to timely and efficiently transport products from our third-party suppliers to our facility by ocean marine channels; (xxii) our ability to respond to new lighting technologies and market trends, and fulfill our warranty obligations with safe and reliable products; (xxiii) any delays we may encounter in making new products available or fulfilling customer specifications; (xxiv) any flaws or defects in our products or in the manner in which they are used or installed; (xxv) our ability to protect our intellectual property rights and other confidential information, and manage infringement claims by others; (xxvi) our compliance with government contracting laws and regulations, through both direct and indirect sale channels, as well as other laws, such as those relating to the environment and health and safety; (xxvii) risks inherent in international markets, such as economic and political uncertainty, changing regulatory and tax requirements and currency fluctuations, including tariffs and other potential barriers to international trade; and (xxviii) our ability to remediate a significant deficiency, maintain effective internal controls and otherwise comply with our obligations as a public company and under Nasdaq listing standards. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made, and we undertake no obligation to update forward-looking statements, except as required by law. 

Contact:

DGI Comm
EnergyFocus@dgicomm.com
212-825-3210