In conclusion, the promise of plasmonic catalysis as a technological breakthrough relies on high hot carrier driven activity. It is shown here that only a tiny amount (<1%) of the total absorbed power by Pt nanoparticles as the catalyst, is effectively used for hot carrier driven activity, which still results in quadrupling of the rate constant. On the other hand, the thermal analysis shows that it would take significantly higher intensity (>20 sun) or system size (>12 cm x 12 cm illuminated catalyst area) to achieve such an enhancement via a purely photothermal route when considering 100% thermalization of the absorbed energy. The fundamental difference in the two enhancement routes (i.e. hot carriers vs. photothermal) arises from the difference in the quality of the energy in the form of hot-carriers versus heat. Before thermalization, the entire absorbed power is trapped in the catalyst nanoparticle in the form of hot carriers (high grade energy) to accelerate the reaction over the nanoparticle interface. Thus, as it has been shown, even a small fraction of this trapped energy in the form of hot carriers can reduce the Ea significantly. However, once this energy thermalizes and dissipates as heat, it gets distributed over the entire volume in the vicinity with its concentration dropping exponentially along the distance from the source. Naturally, at the nanoparticle interface, the thermalized energy is now significantly diluted. Thus, heat as a low-grade form of energy simply cannot be present in a concentrated form at the nanoscale in the same way that hot-carriers can, to accelerate a reaction. The low quality of heat as a form of energy has also posed the difficulties in disentangling thermal contributions from the hot carrier contribution in plasmonic antenna reactor studies. As it has been shown, at least 10 sun intensity is required to raise the temperature of the nanoparticles by 10 to 15 o C in Herran et al.'s 24 set-up, to measure the temperature with reasonable accuracy. To subtract the thermal effect, external heating under dark conditions as a control experiment is adopted as a solution. In any case, high temperature gain is needed in the lights-on experiments to estimate the thermal part accurately, minimizing errors that may arise from temperature gradients. As it has been shown it can only be achieved in large enough reactors, by using high illumination intensities, or by combining both.