The Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM), like many Earth System Models, faces a number of performance challenges in preparing for exascale architectures. In the broader computational science community, a number of newer approaches to advanced computing systems are being promoted and may be appropriate for Earth System Models. These include directive-based approaches, performance-portable data models and loop optimization, and Asynchronous Many-Task approaches. We will present early results from our exploration of exascale programming models. Based on these early results, we will describe paths for implementing E3SM on new exascale platforms.