I'm so confused what the point of this argument is. Why can't IC2 just be an older mod with a different idea of "balance?"
If you want to give a compelling argument about the Macerator, it's simple: it's way easier to get early game. Way, way, way, way easier. The total cost of ownership and management of a macerator is a tiny fraction of the huge hassle that early game buildcraft power management is. Buildcraft power before conduits is terrible. It isn't just difficult by design... energy pipes have very weird and sometimes difficult-to-reproduce behaviors that frequently result in explosions, whereas EU is an almost absurdly forgiving power source.
And it used to be the end of the story. TE changed that, and IC2's response seems so far to be, "Well yeah but most people who care play with Advanced Machines or Gregtech and these all use the macerator as step one in a bigger tech tree." Which is a good response, actually. It's just those of us playing DW20 don't have said machines, and those of us that watch DW20's latest seasons may note that he does the bare minimum to get a gravity suit and then leaves it all behind. So if you're feeling like IC2 is a bit of a derelict in that pack, I suspect that is true.