A new fuel mixture in city vehicles will save the City of Bellevue more than $25,000 a year and help reduce emissions over a vehicle’s lifetime, the city announced this week.

“Our new biodiesel contract is a big win for Bellevue’s Environmental Stewardship Initiative,” said Emma Johnson, the city’s resource conversation manager. “Not only is the city being a good steward of our environment, but we’re saving taxpayers a substantial amount of money.”

Biodiesel is a fuel made from vegetable oil mixed with methanol to create a product to fire fuel engines.

The city’s new mixture, a biodiesel blend of 80 percent petroleum diesel and 20 percent biodiesel, is purported to reduce vehicle life-cycle emissions by 16.5 percent compared to petroleum diesel-only vehicles. Bellevue has 240 diesel vehicles out of a fleet of 694, all of which are using the new blend, referred to as a “B20” blend.

They were previously using a 15 percent biodiesel blend, and will save 28 cents a gallon by switching to a slightly higher biodiesel cocktail.

Altogether, changing to recycled cooking oil translates to estimated savings of $25,650 a year for the City of Bellevue.

Additionally, the current fuel is different because it recycles used cooking oil instead of using virgin-crop oil.

Seaport Petroleum, the company contracting with Seattle and Bellevue, claims at least 51 percent of the recycled oil comes from businesses within a 50-mile radius of Seattle.

So the oil frying crab rangoon down the street might be the same oil which later powers a city vehicle.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, biodiesel reduces greenhouse gas by at least 57 percent for non-recycled oil and up to 86 percent for recycled cooking oil when compared to petroleum diesel.

“The opportunity came up to use the City of Seattle’s new biodiesel contract to save money and reduce our greenhouse gas emissions,” Johnson said. “We’ve been greening our fleet since 2001 and increased biodiesel usage is part of that.”

The changed mixture of fuel is part of Bellevue’s Environmental Stewardship Initiative, a push to make the city more green and sustainable while saving taxpayers money.

Bellevue’s Service Center building and streetlights around the city run on solar arrays. The city encourages residents to put up their own solar arrays as well.

As part of the Environmental Stewardship Initiative, the city has also replaced half of its fleet with hybrids or electric vehicles and has reduced energy use in city hall by 22 percent since 2009.

“It’s allowed us to hold down fuel costs,” Johnson said. “Looking at changing fuels for the fleet is increasing conservation and efficiency.”