In this paper we proposed a novel Adaptive Distributed Wavelet Compression (ADWC) algorithm for reducing energy consumption in a wireless sensor network, where each of the sensors has limited power. This algorithm is characterized by a distributed lifting factorization, which matching well with the transmission strategy employed in wireless sensor networks., it also present an adaptive algorithm to selects the optimal wavelet compression parameters to minimize total energy dissipation. The simulation results showed that these approaches can achieve significant energy savings without sacrificing the quality of the data reconstruction.