Rolling-element bearings are usually subject to faults that need prompt detection in order to prevent sudden failures. Many time-frequency analysis techniques have been used for the purpose of bearing fault detection and diagnosis.From these techniques, wavelets and empirical mode decomposition (EMD) stand out as the most widely applied methods in bearing fault diagnosis. Recently, a novel method named the parameterless empirical wavelet transform (PEWT) has been proposed to combine the wavelet formulation with the adaptability of the empirical mode decomposition. In this paper, the parameterless empirical wavelet transform (PEWT) is combined with envelope detection (ED) to present a new scheme named PEWT-ED for non-stationary signal analysis. The capabilities and limitations of the new method in bearing fault diagnosis are investigated using simulation and experiment. The results show that the new approach can effectively extract the bearing fault characteristics. The PEWT-ED is found to be a powerful tool in signal de-noising and enhancement for fault diagnosis purposes.