Saying that the largest coal plants are more carbon intensive than the average of coal and gas plants in the same country is such an absurdly strange stat to use that I believe this paper was funded by natural gas interests. Nothing else makes any sense to me.

For those unfamiliar, gas plants are much less carbon intensive than coal plants. It gets a bit murkier if you include methane leaks, though gas is less dirty in terms of non greenhouse pollutants but basically both should be phased out and coal should generally go first.