Future wireless systems are being designed for extremely high data rates and are directly contributing to the global energy consumption. This trend is undesirable not only due to the environmental concerns, but to cost as well since energy costs are becoming a significant part of the operating expenditures for the telecom operators. Recently, energy efficient wireless systems have become a new research paradigm. Cooperative communication has shown good potential in improving coverage, providing robust radio links, reducing infrastructure cost, and has the possibility to reduce the total system energy consumption. This paper looks at possible deployment strategies for wireless networks that can reduce the energy consumption. We look at the tradeoff between the number of relay nodes and the number of base stations and their implications on the total energy consumption of wireless networks. The obtained results show that adaptive resource allocation between the base station and the relay node is an efficient way of reducing the energy consumption of the system. Furthermore, this reduction in energy consumption increases with increasing the system target spectral efficiency.