In this paper, we present an energy efficient, scalable, and distributed node disjoint multipath routing algorithm for wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The proposed algorithm, the multipath energy-aware routing protocol (MERP), adjusts traffic flows via a novel load balancing scheme. The MERP has a higher average node energy efficiency, lower control overhead, and a shorter average delay than those of well-known previous works. Moreover, since MERP takes into consideration network reliability, it is useful for delivering data in unreliable environments.