Following peer review of the Accelerated Climate Modeling for Energy (ACME) project, program sponsors at the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Biological and Environmental Research tasked the project leadership to "produce a succinct summary (25 pages or less) of the project that articulates a strategy for accountably achieving a very small number of high-impact scientific deliverables enabled by computing at extreme scale—first in the short term of 3 years and also in the longer term of 10 years; include prioritization and sequencing, and include both climate-science and technical (computational and workflow) elements."

The project leadership accepted this assignment as an opportunity to concisely articulate the project strategy, including the roadmap and initial implementation plan. The present document, which admittedly exceeds 25 pages, should be viewed as a supplement to the original proposal. In that context, this document will not repeat information contained in the proposal, but will often refer to it. ACME is an evolving project within a constantly changing environment. The project strategy and plan will be updated periodically in response to and in anticipation of these changes, with the first update occurring in approximately six months.