Fine granular scalability is a coding tool, recently introduced in the emerging MPEG-4 standard, which enables the creation of very flexible scalable video bitstreams. This paper investigates the transmission of fine granular scalable (FGS) video over wireless links, using power management for unequal error protection of the bitstream. In wireless systems, energy may be a limited resource, and a wise use of it is important for system efficiency. An algorithm is proposed which is able to optimally distribute the total available power for the transmission of the enhancement layer, given a distortion or energy constraint. Experimental results demonstrate the performance advantage of the proposed algorithm over fixed power schemes and heuristic approaches.