Inno­v­a­tive approach­es are need­ed to address the needs of the 1.3 bil­lion peo­ple lack­ing elec­tric­i­ty, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly tran­si­tion­ing to a decar­bonized ener­gy sys­tem. With par­tic­u­lar focus on the ener­gy needs of the under­served, we present an ana­lyt­ic and con­cep­tu­al frame­work that clar­i­fies the het­ero­ge­neous con­tin­u­um of cen­tral­ized on-grid elec­tric­i­ty, autonomous mini- or com­mu­ni­ty grids, and dis­trib­uted, indi­vid­ual ener­gy ser­vices. A his­tor­i­cal analy­sis shows that the present day is a unique moment in the his­to­ry of elec­tri­fi­ca­tion where decen­tral­ized ener­gy net­works are rapid­ly spread­ing, based on super-effi­cient end-use appli­ances and low-cost pho­to­voltaics. We doc­u­ment how this evo­lu­tion is sup­port­ed by crit­i­cal and wide­ly avail­able infor­ma­tion tech­nolo­gies, par­tic­u­lar­ly mobile phones and vir­tu­al finan­cial ser­vices. These dis­rup­tive tech­nol­o­gy sys­tems can rapid­ly increase access to basic elec­tric­i­ty ser­vices and direct­ly inform the emerg­ing Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Goals for qual­i­ty of life, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly dri­ving action towards low-car­bon, Earth-sus­tain­ing, inclu­sive ener­gy systems.