Actually no syngas is used in massive industrial quantities worldwide everyday to make synthetic diesel, jet fuel, and petrol. it is also used to make synthetic lubricants on a massive scale, you can walk into Wal-Mart right now and buy Pennsoil Ultra Syn oil that is made from natural gas that is steam reformed to syngas then via Fischer–Tropsch GTL reactions to long chain lubricant molecules. They charge $9 a quart for this premium syngas sourced lubricant.
Syngas is a valuable industrial feed stock used around the world in mind boggling quantities on a daily basis. producing it from air water and solar energy is indeed a breakthrough one that if they can scale up would have immediate commercially significant applications in the petrochemical industrial complex.