Cognitive radio (CR) technique is a useful tool for improving spectrum utilization by detecting and using the vacant frequency bands while avoiding interference to the primary user. The sensing performance in a CR network can be improved by allowing some CR users to perform cooperative spectrum sensing. In this paper, we propose a new sensing algorithm that utilizes an adaptive energy threshold for cooperative spectrum sensing in which a changeable energy threshold is adopted by the CR users for improving local sensing performance. Through the proposed scheme, the reliability of global decision can be enhanced mainly due to the improvement in local sensing performance.