Sure, but if you can synthesize carbon chains directly then you can make pure compounds. Probably things more valuable than sugar. So you would compare energy o

Sure, but if you can synthesize carbon chains directly then you can make pure compounds. Probably things more valuable than sugar. So you would compare energy of growing plants/microbes + downstream processing or chemical inputs and processing energy (which will never be pure) to whatever this can make - not much right now it seems.